


The Construction of Forts

by Canis_cosmos



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Complete, Confused Will Graham, Dark Will Graham, Devious Hannibal, Gen, Good Will Graham, Hallucinations, Hannibal (TV) Season/Series 04, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Manipulation, Memory Palace, Murder, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Psychology, Ravenstag, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Slow Burn, Unorthodox Therapy, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Wendigo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:15:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24148801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canis_cosmos/pseuds/Canis_cosmos
Summary: Trying to remain true to the essence of the TV show, this story follows them off the cliff.Hannibal is still trying to explore and peel back layers of Will, purportedly to help him find his 'truest self', while Will battles with the consequences of his changing mind.
Comments: 37
Kudos: 72





	1. Chapter 1

**The House on the Bluff**

**Day 1 after the fall**

The fading day held a bruised and tentative truce, Christmas in the trenches; an acknowledgment that the past still remained, that the present defied understanding, and that the necessity of addressing wounds outweighed all other considerations.

In order to talk Will through the necessary steps of suturing bullet wounds and setting broken bones, Hannibal had refused serious pain medication, basking instead in the panacea of their proximity. Each controlled intake of breath a cool draught of Will’s presence, nerves and exhaustion seeping out from under the blood and brine still caked to his skin.

With gauze, Will’s help, a flashlight and a mirror, Hannibal had determined that the ascending colon had escaped the bullet’s passage, simplifying matters considerably. The internal muscle stitches had been the longest and most excruciating part of the process, but the entire experience had almost been worth it to hear Will’s punched out exhalation when he saw the keloid scar tissue of the Verger brand for the first time, and brushed hesitant fingertips around the raised edges of the rampant boar.

The entrance wound just below his kidney had been a relatively simple affair to stitch; the exit wound was a different matter. A distorted amoeba shape, Will had to sew a dark star to knit the ragged edges together. Hannibal lifted his gaze from the looping thread and grazed it across Will’s face, focused on his task. 

He admired the shifting corrugated furrow between Will’s eyebrows, the frustrated warble of lips pressed together resolutely; determined to do the job well, doubtful of his capability as his fingers started to shake after the prolonged effort. When he was finished, his fine calloused fingers pressed down on the adhesive tape with a caution that approached tenderness, but skirted just shy of it. 

Will looked up and caught Hannibal’s scrutiny, his frown deepening. ‘You were going to tell me how we survived the fall?’

Easing himself back to lean against the headboard, Hannibal marshalled his thoughts and ignored the tangled roots of a headache twisting through his brain – blood loss and lingering dehydration. 

He cleared his throat before replying. ‘You passed out as we began to fall, when you realised what you had done. Or maybe you waded into your stream.’ Hannibal licked his lips; there was nothing accusatory in his tone, but he paused to watch Will wince at the words before continuing. ‘It takes twelve seconds to reach terminal velocity, we fell for five.’

‘You counted, while we fell?’ Will’s voice, weighted with its own fatigue, reminded Hannibal of the rasp of stubble beneath finger and nail.

‘I have dropped stones from the cliff in the past. All objects free fall at the same rate, regardless of mass. Only air resistance slows a descent. I kept us level with the water for the first four seconds, and then turned us into a dive. I held your knife out before us, to cut us a path into the sea.’ 

Will’s eyes went distant, presumably picturing the blade piercing the surface tension of the water, or perhaps seeing that same blade piercing the Dragon. Returning to the conversation, he snapped off a glove and rubbed his face wearily, offering a well-worn axiom, ‘“It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop?”’

Hannibal blinked, allowing in that fraction of a second the memory to replay: _cradling Will’s unique skull against his shoulder, turning his face away to avoid their heads colliding when the water cuts their fall._

He had felt in that moment, not fear, but elation. He had the notion that he was Orpheus, charging head first into Hades, having gripped his Eurydice’s soul when the viper struck; a swifter route to making a deal with the god of death. Or the devil, depending on which underworld one found oneself in.

‘Extending the moment of impact to slow an abrupt deceleration reduces the severity of injuries.’

Will’s eyes dropped to look at Hannibal’s left arm in its new bandages. The line of his mouth gave little away, but his eyes leaked his guilt like broken shutters trying to hold back the light. ‘The water catches you like a chute instead of a ram?’

‘Not exactly like a chute.’ Hannibal smiled, more to himself than at Will.

 _His left arm explodes with a sensation of being telescoped in on itself and ripped away. Salt water punches up into his nose, invading his sinuses, bruising both the inside and outside of his face. Cold (_ pain _) dark (_ pain _) water tumbles him and tries to tear Will from his grasp. It sucks them deeper into a black expanse that stretches away in all directions._

Hannibal had learned how to compartmentalise pain a long time ago. Further back than he generally preferred to consider - that being the purpose of the first compartments. As the pain from impact strove to drive him unconscious, he had banished the peripheral cuts and aches, chastened the insolent whine of his bullet wound, and directed his mind away from the shattered arm, the dislocated shoulder. He gathered all his attention to him in a concentrated point and used it to focus exclusively on staying conscious and maintaining a grip on Will.

‘We were under the water longer than we were in the air.’

_The tumble calms, and orientating himself is actually easier with Will’s dead weight providing a rapid clue to downward direction. He kicks them toward the surface, one hand a rictus claw on Will’s shirt, the other useless at his side. They might as well be immersed in ink until the rippling disc of the moon materialises and comes into focus through the stinging ocean water: the promise of life ahead._

Cresting the surface he had sucked in the air and its taste was sweeter on his tongue than any wine he had ever drunk. The black cliffs loomed over them with the impassivity of God, no mercy in the solemn craggy walls. At their top, an incredible distance above, the glow from the house, as remote and inaccessible as the moon.

‘Being unconscious may have saved you some extra broken bones, but it did you no favours in the water.’

_His body temperature and blood pressure are dropping rapidly, but he shakes Will, limp and not breathing. Wretchedly, pointlessly, angrily, he calls Will’s name, once. It hurts his throat where the saltwater had forced entry through his nasal passages._

Taking three deep breaths, he had heaved Will up and bit into the other man’s shirt collar. He puffed with the exertion of holding him up as he trod water, and moved his arm round to sharply relocate his left shoulder.

They plunged back under the water, and though his jaw was closed he couldn’t help but bear his teeth at the acute lance of pain, and more salt water slid into his mouth.

He spat out the water as he kicked to break the surface again. Filling his lungs for buoyancy he lay on his back, pulling Will’s head up onto his chest with his good arm and dragging the broken one over to weigh him in place. He reached into Will’s mouth and stuck his fingers down Will’s throat.

Will’s body jerked and a slew of blood and water spilled from his mouth. He had coughed up more water and gasped in raggedly, and Hannibal murmured ‘Atta-boy.’

The tide was pulling away from the cliffs, mercifully not attempting to dash them against the rocks, but getting sucked out into the open Atlantic was a correspondingly dim prospect. Three years of incarceration had softened his physique, but with a slow backwards crawl he kept them parallel to the cliffs until reaching the ledge eroded in its side.

Getting them out of the water had taken the last of his strength. He had wanted to get them higher up the roughly hewn steps, away from the greedy reaching fingers of the sea, but when he had pulled Will up beside him onto the shallow and slippery edge of rock, the world lost its consistency, and darkness swallowed him.

‘I got us out of the water. You remember the rest, I think.’ The two of them took a moment to absorb what the day had required of them.

Hannibal had woken again, the sun spilling over the lip of the horizon, with the cold wet stone of the cliff ledge unyielding against his cheekbone. He was facing Will, who had woken him by moaning unhappily and curling into a ball, shaking, teeth chattering. His eyes, crusted around with salt, opened with slow blinks.

Hannibal captured the moment with a blink of his own; the moment of being aware without having any knowledge of context was etched into Will’s flesh, the startling blue of his irises set against sore red sclera. In some ways that must be the purest version of Will, the one that existed beyond the prejudices imposed on him by the exterior world.

Then comprehension moved his features, and the moment passed.

To Hannibal’s disappointment, the awe from the cliff top, which had vied with the moonlight for the honour of lighting Will’s eyes, did not feature in his current perspective. In its place Will wore the mask he used when he didn’t know how he should be feeling, made almost feral by the scowl and clenched jaw as he fought the hypothermia.

‘How… alive?’ He winced through his teeth, his hand going to the wound on his face.

‘Don’t probe it with your fingers.’ Hannibal instructed, and Will froze his hand before lowering it grudgingly. 

Hannibal reached out with his good arm. ‘Come here Will. We are both dangerously cold.’

Will narrowed his eyes suspiciously, but the shuddering in his limbs made the offer impossible to refuse. He had lain stiffly next to Hannibal, slowly relaxing enough to put some pressure into the contact.

They lay together in distant proximity as the seagulls wheeled overhead, exhaustion and shock smothering any thoughts of speech. The early morning sun occasionally broke through the thin veil of cloud, imparting an extra touch of intermittent warmth.

Will remained tense and shivering, chin tucked into his chest, as turned away from Hannibal as he could be while sharing his heat. Eventually he fell asleep again, and the contractions of his muscles abated. Hannibal waited a few minutes then checked his pulse with a gentle touch. The rhythm and pressure were satisfactory, considering, but the contact woke Will with a soft exclamation, and Hannibal’s fingers were off his neck like a fly. He couldn’t tell if Will had been aware of it.

‘We need to climb back to the house. Do you think you are ready to try?’ The idea set Will off shivering again, and Hannibal rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘The longer we wait, the weaker we will become, and the tide must be rising.’

Will nodded jerkily and peeled away from Hannibal’s side. The slight breeze coming off the ocean was sufficient to immediately neutralise the heat they had kept between them, and the sudden contrast struck Hannibal as an apt metaphor for how separation from Will had felt, ever since the night he had killed Abigail. 

Until last night on the bluff.

The crevice in the cliff with its roughshod steps stirred an unwelcome memory from his youth, and Hannibal strangled it with vehemence, cognisant that this fatigued state rendered him more vulnerable to certain memories.  
Any extra strength would be welcome for the task ahead, and Hannibal cast an eye at the lobster pots that were chained to their shelf of rock. One of them had a guest.

‘It is a shame I don’t still have your knife Will. I am afraid it was lost it in the water.’

Will appeared to not hear his words, or perhaps he did not wish to explain why he had pocketed the knife before joining Hannibal on the cliff edge. Instead, he made a show of testing how much weight each leg was prepared to support.

Hannibal allowed him his avoidance, and lifted the lid of the trap and swept up the crab with a sure and deft movement. From his periphery he noted Will wincing as Hannibal cracked it neatly and firmly against a jutting edge of rock, killing it instantly.

He limped back towards Will. ‘Can you remove the carapace? It will be hard with only one working hand.’

Will looked nauseous but capitulated, seeing the sense in trying to get a small measure of fuel into them before the Herculean task ahead.

The climb stretched inexorably, a small piece of hell carved in the rock, gravity shouting behind them with the voice of the Atlantic. Hannibal had thrown up once and passed out twice from the exertion. The first time he had sacrificed his shirt to make a sling. Both times he had woken to Will’s cold nervous fingers gripping his face, and intractable blue eyes.

It had taken them the whole morning and some of the afternoon to get back to the house. They staggered around to the driveway. The scene that greeted them outside the entrance caused both their faltering steps to halt.

What had looked black in the moonlight was a dark congealing vermillion in the muted afternoon light. Hannibal would have liked to linger to appreciate it, but right now he did not believe he could even take a reliable mental picture of the scene. He glanced at Will, whose face again carried a mask to hide conflicting emotions. He shifted his weight, indicating they should continue to the house.

*

  
Will finished dressing Hannibal’s wounds and shifted back, wanting to flee and linger in equal measure. Pulling thorns from lions’ paws was a reckless sort of mercy.

‘Is it safe to stay here? Francis found us, maybe Jack…’ He trailed off. They couldn’t exactly order a taxi, and Will wasn’t volunteering to drive.

‘I would suggest we leave if we could.’ Hannibal rasped. ‘But we will have to risk staying for now. Neither of us are in a state...’ He sighed and didn’t finish his sentence. Will found this to be a particularly worrying sign.

Will collected the medical supplies and walked to the sideboard. ‘You should sleep.’

‘Come here Will, I need to dress your wounds now.’ Hannibal had said, paler and more drawn that Will had ever seen him before.

‘They’ve stopped bleeding.’ He said. ‘Maybe you should get some rest first.’

‘I would rest… easier… if you let me look at them now.’

Will grimaced and brought the first aid kit back to Hannibal, who instructed: ‘Sit here and show me the shoulder.’

The wound had briefly stopped bleeding on the cliff shelf, the fabric of his shirt helping to clot the wound. Their exertion up the cliff steps had torn it free, and this time the shirt, stiff with dried blood, hadn’t been welcomed back into the mouth of the cut. He undid the top buttons of his shirt and pulled the right side back to reveal the wound. Hannibal lightly felt at the abused flesh, examining the edges of the tear.

‘I’m going to have as many holes as Garret Jacob Hobbs soon.’ Will observed, mildly.

Hannibal gave a tight smile, then raised his right hand, and gently laid his palm against Will’s face, tilting his head to better see the puncture in his cheek; his eyes clinical, his touch familiar. Then he lowered his hand.

‘Pass me a torch please.’

Will grunted, dug through the supplies, finding a thin pen-torch and handing it to Hannibal.

‘Thank you. Now please open your mouth as far as you can. Keep your tongue down as much as possible.’

Will obliged, determined to hold his own pain the way Hannibal had.

‘Good. That’s good.’ He drew back and Will gratefully closed his mouth. ‘It will need stitches, and a mouth wound can lead to sepsis quickly, so we will have to take good care of it.’

He instructed Will to wash his mouth out with a sterile solution, and dab the external cuts with antiseptic. When Will came back, Hannibal was unconscious. The sight of his vulnerability lit a small flare of triumph in him, and he studied Hannibal’s slack face and the steady rise and fall of his breath. 

Unlike the two collapses Will had witnessed on the steps up from the ocean, seeing Hannibal ‘safe’ and asleep caused a collision of conflicting instincts.

Guilt still wound around the back of his brain, a cowed familiar creature seeking to be picked up and tended to. It mewled an insistent whine that he should leave, flee, find a way to contact Jack, return to Molly and Walt. Knit the torn threads of their life back into something acceptable and sane.

_Molly, her pale eyes crinkling with amusement._

_Molly, transformed, clothed in sun, mirrors in her eyes and mouth, reflecting the glory of the Dragon…_

He shuddered.

With a ferocity that made his thumbs twitch, he wanted to straddle Hannibal where he lay, pin him to the bed and drag a pillow over his face. Feel him buck uselessly beneath Will’s reckoning. Perhaps smothering in dry darkness could achieve what the liquid darkness had not. It would be the intimate death he had always promised – but cowardly too. He knew he lacked the conviction to look him in the eyes and strangle him. Nor did he want to cut him open – not after having just closed him up.

Another part raged with relief and affection; no warm soothing emotion this, it raked claws of possession and righteousness through his soft tissue: he had _earned_ Hannibal, he was _owed_ this. Hannibal, out of his cell, back in the world. Back in his life. Fury and epiphany and violent delight.

He had embraced madness.

Will shuddered again and he moved in a wide arc around the bed, pulling a chair up to the window that faced the track leading to the house. He had no illusions about trying to stay awake, but perhaps he would be roused if a car approached.

After a brief reverie, his mind lingering too long on the scene painted across the flagstones outside, Will drew the blanket to his chin, and gave in to exhaustion.

His last thought, as sleep took him, was of missing his dogs.

**Day 2**

The seagulls were feeding on the dragon’s remains. Hannibal watched them without expression, but the sight of them as carrion birds unsettled Will, who had strong and fond childhood associations of them. 

Hannibal gave a low hum, breaking the surface tension of the silence before musing aloud, ‘This does not seem a fitting end for Mr Dolarhyde. A good death, but a poor memorial.’

As he spoke, the bruising on his face shifted in a living Rorschach test. How appropriate.

‘How would you… _memorialise_ him?’ Will asked, stressing the word with obvious emphasis. He mumbled more than usual, facial movements pulling at the fresh stitches in his cheek.

Hannibal glanced at him consideringly, then back at the body. ‘There are many things I might do if I were at full strength, and if he were still fresh. For now though, I think we should offer him to the sea, in exchange for sparing our lives.’

Will arched his eyebrows and scoffed, ‘A second-hand sacrifice? That won’t please the gods.’

‘We stole two meals from the fish. It is only fair we give something back.’

Given the man’s mass, it was also the easiest way to dispose of the body. Breathing hard with the effort, they half dragged and half rolled The Dragon to the cliff edge.

‘Can I trust you not to throw us a second time?’ Hannibal asked mildly.

Will shot him a quick glance and then averted his eyes in amusement. ‘I think I’ve learned my lesson.’

They knelt by the body, the cliff edge just beyond it, resting a moment.

Will lifted his head, eyes closed, and let the wind and light wash the tiredness from his face. The sun filtered faintly through clouds, but the endless darkness behind Will’s lids rippled with moonlight.

‘Are you saying a prayer for him Will?’ Hannibal’s voice teased through the nightscape.

Will grunted a laugh. ‘No.’ He kept his eyes shut. ‘I was back in the night.’

Once they rolled the body off the cliff, Francis Dolarhyde would be gone forever; would this part of Will fall into the ocean with him? In a mind that was never static, how permanent was this mind-set? He wanted to remember, wanted to hold the taste of that night in his mouth. It had tasted of blood – it still did – but more, it had tasted of freedom.

*

With his head lifted and his eyes closed, the wind and light washed the tiredness from Will’s face. Hannibal took another mental image, and decided he would draw Will like that, with Zephyr’s hands in his hair, and Apollo’s benediction shining down on him.

When Will opened his eyes and looked almost regretfully at the body before them, Hannibal thought he perceived the lingering gaze.

‘You wish for a trophy?’ He said.

Will tensed, then made himself relax. ‘Maybe. Part of me’ He said softly.

‘We have the wounds he gave us Will. We will carry them until we die. Is that not souvenir enough?’

‘All my scars make me think of you.’ He murmured, then he seemed to hear his own words and he looked up with a slightly panicked embarrassment. Hannibal could not quite hide how pleased this made him.

‘Even The Dragon’s?’

‘I still feel that all this…’ Will swept an arm back at the dried blood that caked the paving stones behind them. ‘Was somehow set in motion by you.’

Hannibal nodded fractionally. ‘I’m flattered Will. But I cannot claim responsibility for all of this. Much of it was your design.’

Will winced again, but nodded his acceptance of the truth in the words. Hannibal let out a slow deliberate breath, considering the man beneath them.

The worst of the rigour had worn off, and he could open the man’s mouth with only a little extra effort. He examined the inside of the man’s mouth, grunted in satisfaction, and after reaching in and spending a moment with his fingers lost in Dolarhyde’s mouth, removed a set of partial overdentures.

‘These are not The Dragon’s teeth, only Francis Dolarhyde’s.’ Hannibal said.

‘I know, The Dragon’s were left in the fire.’ But Will’s attention lit on them with an uneasy hunger.

Hannibal smiled indulgently and placed them on the ground between Will and himself. ‘I leave it for you to decide if you wish to have them in remembrance.’

Will huffed out one of his characteristic derisive laughs. ‘You make it sound so noble.’

‘What are the admirable traits associated with nobility Will? Honesty. Courage. Patience. Integrity. Was the Great Red Dragon without these qualities? Was his death?’

Will shook his head. Leaving the dentures where they were for now, he put his hands on Dolarhyde’s body, almost reverentially. ‘He didn’t lack those qualities.’ He admitted.

‘Neither do you Will.’ Hannibal concluded, his satisfied tone ending the discussion, and Will contented to leave the matter alone for now.

When they rolled the body off the cliff and leant forward, still on hands and knees, to watch it drop, Will’s breath caught in his throat.

‘I can’t believe we survived that fall.’ He said, as the body met the waves.

Hannibal nodded. They knelt there for long minutes, staring down at the grave Will had tried to consign them to.

‘Do you regret that we lived?’ Hannibal asked.

After a moment Will shook his head, and whispered a reluctant ‘No.’ Another pause. ‘But it might have been better, for the everyone else, if we hadn’t.’

  
  
<p>


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will continues to try and come to grips with his revelation in the presence of the dragon, and what this means for his life. A plan starts to come together, if they could just muster the will power to stay out of trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prev chapter is Days 1 and 2, this chapter starts Day 4, no missing text in between.

**Day 4**

The decision to go to Atlantic City had been entirely Will’s. He had explained to Hannibal that he had a hard time imagining them in a casino resort, and this would be true of anyone else who claimed to understand them.

Hannibal’s palpable reluctance only supported his theory, but by way of compromise they stayed in an AirBnB on the edge of the city, under an assumed account. Unfortunately, they still had to pick up the keys from an inn in the main tourist drag.

Will parked the car. ‘I’ll go in alone.’

Hannibal twisted him a slight smile. ‘Do you think my sensibilities will be so offended?’

‘I don’t feel it’s necessary to inflict the harsh crudities of this environment on your refined senses.’

‘Or perhaps you are concerned that someone will be rude to us, and in a condition of stress, aggravated by the assault on my tastes, I will be unable to contain the ‘monster’ in me?’

Will’s exasperation was clearly feigned, from the slight tick of amusement at the edges of his mouth. ‘No Dr Lecter. I know you won’t lose control so easily. But while we’ve both had our brushes with fame, you are considerably more notorious than I am.’

‘Then I shall stay here.’ Hannibal acceded lightly. Will nodded, almost politely. As he opened the door, Hannibal added. ‘Good luck containing your own monster.’

Will paused, then continued out the car without looking back. Hannibal watched him walk away before turning away with something like fond indulgence.

\- - -

Hannibal turned the radio onto a classical music station as he and Will unpacked the supplies they had bought into the half furnished kitchen. With his one functioning arm Hannibal went about checking opening and closing cupboards before arranging the supplies to his satisfaction.

‘Are you waiting for something?’ Will asked him. Hannibal looked up questioningly, and Will elaborated. ‘We haven’t started cooking, yet you’re keeping a pretty close eye on the time.’

Hannibal smiled briefly at being caught. He had only checked the time twice, suggesting to him that Will already guessed at Hannibal’s suspicion. Will’s voice held guarded amusement, as it so often did. Hannibal knew he used that tone when he lied, but not exclusively. He pouted minutely.

‘I only wonder if we should be expecting any company for dinner?’

Will tried to subdue a smile, clearly enjoying himself. ‘You don’t trust me.’

‘Can I?’ Hannibal asked sincerely, before moving a chopping board onto the counter and reaching for the wrapped bundle of meat in the paper bag. He looked back into Will’s silence. ‘You went into the inn alone Will. You could have made a call.’

Will’s eyes shone with a kind of triumph. He raised an eyebrow and spoke slowly. ‘I didn’t make any calls.’

Hannibal nodded and pursed his lips briefly. ‘Did you send out any other… invitations? Scatter any breadcrumbs?’ He watched Will closely for his reaction. Will shook his head slowly, challenge ringing in his gaze, his own small smile fixed on his face. 

Hannibal glanced meaningfully at the clock again, then unwrapped the leg of lamb and smiled down at it. ‘Shall we prepare dinner?’

Will maintained an almost haughty demeanour, eyebrows and the edge of his mouth curved in self-indulgent amusement as he helped Hannibal prepare dinner. 

Learning to cook with a single arm presented an interesting intellectual and practical exercise, but Will’s extra set of hands were certainly welcome. 

Whether or not Will had deliberately left a trail of some kind, his behaviour clearly indicated he enjoyed keeping Hannibal in doubt. He appeared to bask in the tense expectation while they ate their first course. Hannibal found it pleasant enough, relieved at any rate that Will had not closed down and retreated at the boldness of his decision to remain as long as he had. 

As Hannibal took his seat and speared a cube of lamb, Will gestured at the centrepiece Hannibal had crafted from candles, plants and miscellaneous items from around the property. ‘If the FBI does come crashing in, you couldn’t have them accuse you of having a lazy dinner.’

Hannibal smiled affectionately at the meat skewered on the end of his fork. ‘I always try to treat every meal as though it is a last supper.’ 

Will inclined his head, unable or unwilling to supress his mirth completely. 

After dessert, Will touched his lips with a napkin, more as an affectation than out of need, and Hannibal noted the behavioural mirroring with a slight quirk of his mouth as his eyes strayed again to the clock. 

‘How long will it take you to decide I haven’t given us up? Have you set a time-limit on your concern?’

‘You think I am concerned?’ 

‘Aren’t you?’

Hannibal swirled his wine and took a sip. ‘I am curious.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Will looked down. ‘Your primary driver.’ 

‘What is your primary driver, Will?’ 

Will sighed out and looked over Hannibal’s shoulder. His focus loosened and he stepped away into his imagination. Hannibal watched the other man, his face a living carving, the physical eyes standing down for the glory of the inner eye.

‘I don’t fit the narrative of my life anymore. The life I know I should want. The man I wanted to be.’ Will swallowed. ‘That night… I saw… a truth.’ 

‘And what was that truth?’

Will shook his head, eyes still inwards. ‘The truth was… me. That version of me, was my truest self.’ Will’s hands began to tremble and he moved them off the table without acknowledging it. 

Hannibal let him spend some time with that thought, and then added: ‘Before that night you had only allowed yourself to feel that self as an actor does. A part of you indulging, another part of you reassuring yourself it was the merely pretence at evil, done for good’s intent.’

Will nodded, his eyelids flickering briefly.

‘All your life you have suffered the judgement and expectations of others, regardless of their worthiness to judge you.’

Will’s eyes snapped up. Hannibal paused in his assessment to allow him to speak. ‘You were always going to kill the judge at my trial?’

Hannibal moved his head noncommittally. ‘It was always an available option.’

Will’s eyes slid away and Hannibal continued, ‘You understand every potential perspective. You know you cannot please everybody, so you shut yourself away from the world. But you still judge yourself by their Overton window.’

‘Overton window?’

‘The social and political beliefs of the mainstream society at any given time.’

‘Oh, the ‘window of discourse’.’

Hannibal smiled. ‘The most commonly held beliefs are not always the most rational.’

Will scoffed in agreement as he considered this before crinkling his brow again. ‘But… by my own rationale, killing is wrong.’ 

‘But not always.’

Will hesitated, then shook his head, eyes widening with uncertainty and vulnerability. 

Hannibal nodded, looking away. ‘When the mind is being pulled in too many directions, it is always beneficial to listen to the body.’ Hannibal returned his focus to Will. ‘What did your body tell you, that night on the cliff?’

Even from across the table Hannibal could see Will’s pupils dilate under the shade of his confusion. When he reluctantly pulled his gaze back to meet Hannibal’s, it took him a moment to form the words already perched on his tongue, his mouth working a moment before his vocal chords joined the effort. ‘That I liked it. I liked… killing him.’

Hannibal considered the displeased moue Will’s mouth fell into that showed he found his words troubling in both their content and their inadequacy. 

Hannibal stood, picking up his plate. Coming around the table he placed it atop Will’s plate so he could pick them both up with the one hand. He paused as he turned to move away, looking back down at Will and waiting for eye contact.

‘Do you delight then? Or still simply tolerate?’

Will’s expression flickered between defiance and acceptance, but the compressed lips signalled the conflict would remain internal for now.

Hannibal finished turning away, placed the empty plates on the small trolley, and rolled it out of the room, leaving Will staring inwards again.

**Day 5**

In the late morning, Will came down the stairs remote and distant. Hannibal briefly considered that he might be sleepwalking, but there was a specific reluctance to him only present when he was lucid.

‘Good morning Will.’

‘Morning.’ The word greeted Hannibal; the eyes did not. Will’s hands rubbed at his face, at the stubble he had yet to trim.

Hannibal sipped at his coffee and went back to reading the news. Will poured himself a coffee and slowly finished it while staring glumly at the table.

‘Anything on your mind?’ Hannibal ventured after a time.

‘Not particularly.’ A little hostility in Will’s tone. 

Closing the laptop, Hannibal offered to cook breakfast and Will looked surprised.

‘You haven’t eaten yet?’

‘I had a snack.’

Will raised an eyebrow, cynical. ‘A snack? 

‘Fig and olive tapenade.’ Hannibal replied levelly. 

‘Oh. Just that.’ Will replied, trying for amused, but sounding raw to Hannibal’s ears.

‘We didn’t arrange a time for breakfast; I didn’t know what time you would wake. But I’m happy to cook us something now, if you would like?’

An awkward attempt to smile, ‘I’m not very hungry.’

With a nod, Hannibal stood and began the process of cleaning out and refilling the coffee decanter. The long tear of the bullet’s passage through his midriff protested, and he took a slow breath to acknowledge it before relegating it to the back of his mind. ‘Did you have difficult dreams Will?’

Will ducked his head, and shifted his body language away a little. Hannibal took the cue and decided, at this juncture, not to press the issue.

When Hannibal folded himself gingerly back into his chair, Will gestured half-heartedly at the laptop. ‘Anything about us in the news?’

‘Only speculation. They have not yet found the dragon, nor the house on the bluff.’ 

Will frowned down at the table. ‘Jack will be waiting for the next full moon with his heart in his mouth.’

‘Is that where Jack’s heart should be?’ Hannibal quipped with a glint of mischief. Will glowered at him, but Hannibal remained unmoved, a small smile dancing around the edges of his expression. Will shifted and fidgeted, transferring his attention to the polished surface of the table. 

When the coffee had percolated to his satisfaction, Hannibal poured Will a second cup and another for himself. He tried to meet Will’s gaze, but Will was trailing it along the floor tiles. Hannibal spoke regardless. ‘What would you like to do now Will?’

‘You mean today... or… more generally.’

Hannibal tilted his head to indicate he would not indulge foolish questions.

A heavy sigh, and Will wrapped his fingers around his mug. ‘I don’t know. If it was just me, I might move down to Louisiana, or Florida… somewhere warm and…’ He trailed off. 

‘Fix boats and collect strays?’ Hannibal supplied, and Will nodded. ‘Would you really though? With the new ‘truth’ you have acquired?’

Will grimaced, almost apologetically, fleetingly meeting Hannibal’s eyes. He admitted, ‘It wouldn’t make me happy. But it would be easiest. A life I’m already… used to.’

‘You would not go back to your life with Molly?’

Eyes cast down into his coffee, Will shook his head sadly. ‘Even if she would take me… there’s no going back.’ 

The last few words had a dry and bitter scrape to them. Hannibal observed the corners of Will’s mouth twitch down, and gathered he was trying to craft one of his harsh truths, a defence mechanism he employed when resisting a difficult realisation.

Instead of giving him the time to fashion a barbed statement, Hannibal cut in, ‘You have told me what you would do if you were alone. But you are not alone.’

‘No.’ Will moved his eyes to Hannibal’s, and Hannibal saw a touch of trepidation in them. ‘I’m not.’ 

Hannibal disliked the expression on Will. He sipped his coffee and took a moment to nurse the bitter liquid on his tongue, intruded upon by the fleeting memory of Bedelia’s guarded fear in Italy. Fear, like mercy, had no place at his table.

Will glanced off into the room, beyond the room, through the walls to other imagined scenes. ‘I would like to travel somewhere new. Somewhere I’ve never been before. I’d like to see… what happens to me in a different environment. With a different Overton window.’

Thoughts of Bedelia fell away, to be replaced by a warm mantle of satisfaction.

‘Then I think I have a solution. I have another safe house in Indonesia. It will be far enough from the cultural tropes you have grown up with to let you challenge your unconscious acceptance of the all-American values. And it is a small island, generally populated with enough Australian tourists that we wouldn’t stand out.’ 

Will smiled with sincerity for the first time that morning. ‘How many safe houses do you have?’ he asked in mock accusation.

‘Four, now that I have lost the cliff house. Although I will endeavour to get the number back to five before long.’

A quiet chuckle, and Will looked away shaking his head. ‘And where are your other houses?’

Hannibal looked at him assessingly, but softened his voice with amusement. ‘Do you expect me to give up all my secrets at once?’

‘No Dr Lecter.’ He said slowly, tart humour stretching out another ‘no’ behind it. ‘You’re a man made of secrets, if you were to give them all up, who would you be?’

Hannibal chewed the question, pretending to consider when the answer had arrived instantly. ‘I would be who I always am with myself.’

‘Ah.’ Will deflated slightly and rubbed his face. ‘Even when I didn’t have any secrets, I don’t think I’ve ever…’ he swallowed. ‘Truly known what that means.’

Hannibal looked at him meaningfully with a tilted head. ‘You may yet.’  
  
*

Will had eventually, grudgingly, admitted to hunger, and they had cooked Spanish omelettes. Watching Hannibal patiently teach himself to cut potatoes one-handed had been oddly captivating. He rolled his wrist in the process to move the pressure, and Will thought with a shiver how this temporary set back would likely make Hannibal even more skilled with a knife.

‘Do you like Indonesian food?’ Will asked as they ate.

‘I like all styles of food, if they are prepared with intent and foresight and are pleasing to the pallet.’

‘I’ve not known you to cook many Asian dishes.’

‘Not ones you would classically think of as Asian perhaps, but my menus come from many different cultures. For many traditional Asian dishes though, it is hard to get the right fresh ingredients on this side of the world.’

‘Think globally, cook locally?’

Hannibal acknowledged the sentiment with an inclined head.

Will wondered how his thoughts would taste in a different environment, and realised it wasn’t the only appealing part of the idea. He thought of his actions in Italy, in Lithuania, how much easier it had been to lower inhibitions.

‘It would be interesting to try your cooking in a different environment too.’ 

‘You have decided then?’

Will nodded, drawing his mouth down. ‘At this point, I don’t feel I have much choice but to follow your lead.’

Hannibal gave him a look of patient disappointment that he typically reserved for such tactics. ‘You always have a choice.’

‘I should be grateful, I suppose?’ Will couldn’t help the bitter lump rising in his throat.

Hannibal looked away and took another bite of omelette, perhaps using its taste to wash away the flavour of Will’s discourtesy. ‘I do not ask you for gratitude Will.’

‘What are you asking for?’ Will deliberately kept a deliberate and controlled grip on his voice, but couldn’t stop it vibrating with the chords of deeper significance.

Hannibal looked at him, his own face showing an openness that Will could never be sure was real. ‘Your company.’

Tussling with this for a moment, and finding no suitable response, Will sighed out and sat back in his chair. ‘If it’s an island, they’ll have boats to fix.’ 

‘And I believe they have dogs there too.’

Will scoffed. ‘I can’t commit to a dog if I might have to flee the country at a moment’s notice.’

‘You might be able to improve its life for a while.’

Wondering if that made it better or worse, and thinking briefly of Molly, Will nodded, a strange melancholy on his face.

‘You are mourning your old life?’ Hannibal guessed. 

His mouth felt dry, and he sipped some of the fruit juice. ‘No, I’m… mourning the old me, I think.’

‘You are not the same person?’

Will shook his head. ‘I don’t think I am. I can’t pretend anymore. To myself. That I don’t want more than that.’

Hannibal’s pause betrayed a deeper reaction to the words than the casual tone implied. ‘More?’

Will reluctantly made himself meet Hannibal’s appraisal. The mild interest politely carved in his face belied by the rapt raptor eyes.

A difficult admission to make, made harder by knowing how much the other wished to hear it. ‘I think I’ll want to kill again.’ 

Hannibal’s tongue darted out to smooth his bottom lip. Will had seen the expression before in hungry predators, and in the psychiatrist’s Baltimore office.

‘ “ _Many a jewel of untold worth  
Lies slumbering at the core of earth,  
__In darkness and oblivion drowned.”  
_Are you bringing the shining facets of your hidden treasure into the light Will?’ 

Will closed his eyes, face pinched as if pained, but the strong emotion wasn’t pain, not exactly. It was the anticipation of an elation so sharp it bordered on agony.  
  


**Day 7**

Hannibal managed to manoeuvre his resources as elegantly as he manoeuvred through the rest of life. Will had always struggled to focus on the dreary minutia of the administrative requirements life forced upon him. Slipping into the minds of others was like exploring different jet pools, slipping in and out of their different shapes, temperatures, hydrostatics. Conversely, trying to understand taxes and insurance felt like trying to reshape his brain under a rolling pin.

With Hannibal at the helm, in just two days the arrangements had been made to create whole new identities, histories and financial records, both digitally and physically. 

Hannibal talked Will through the documents in the small study the house offered. They had lit a fire and were sipping tumblers of a Glenfarclas whiskey.

‘It pays to know good people.’ Will concluded after Hannibal had finished and they moved to the deeper seats by the hearth.

‘One must pay to know good people.’ Hannibal returned, and Will gave a polite chuckle. Hannibal held his breath for a moment, prefacing a change in subject with the punctuating interval.

‘Is there anyone you would like to bid farewell, before we take our leave?’

Icy fingers grabbed the back of Will’s neck, plunging him back in time: the plotting that had led to Will truly considering killing Jack. Before Abigail’s brief and bloody resurrection.

‘I think we’ve done enough damage here.’ He whispered. ‘Don’t you?’

Hannibal hooded his eyes and tilted his head slightly, the sharp angles of his face throwing severe shadows across his cheekbones. ‘I have been considering some unfinished business.’

Tension laced Will’s shoulders and lent some iron to his voice. ‘This place has too much history Hannibal. I just want to leave it behind.’

‘Running away is not as psychologically beneficial as making a decision to leave.’ 

Tunefully toneless, Hannibal’s words - _his pack hunters_ – circled Will. A silent growl built in the back of Will’s throat, revving up to become vocal.

‘Meaning what exactly?’  
‘I mean that leaving before I have concluded my affairs will subconsciously draw me away from grounding in a new life. I told you once before I rarely allow myself reason to regret.’

Will considered for a long moment, patience extended by Hannibal placing the emphasis on his own motives, but remaining wary. ‘What is this unfinished business?’ 

‘I wish to seek closure with my former psychiatrist, Dr du Maurier.’ 

Relief swept through him, clearing the way for a more intriguing emotion.

‘Oh.’ 

‘You feared for Alana?’

‘For Jack.’ Will frowned. ‘And Alana.’ 

Hannibal smiled while Will considered whether this last part was still true. 

‘Keeping my promises is important to me. I would hate to make an exception. However, Alana has the resources now to make finding her enough of a challenge that it is not… a current priority.’

‘Very slippery of you.’ Will said dryly. ‘Dr du Maurier, on the other hand?’

‘I would not cheat her of a last goodbye.’

Will nodded. Listening to his body, the shadows of antlers falling across his mind, he could not deny that the idea held some appeal.

‘Perhaps I will accompany you.’ He said, slowly. He sipped from his whiskey. ‘I was her patient too, for a time.’

He looked up to see if Hannibal would react to this. Hannibal’s eyes reflected the flames from the hearth-fire, revealing nothing of the thoughts beneath. He nodded acceptance as though it were new but unsurprising information, and Will couldn’t tell if he had already known.

Will looked away, his mind casting off and remembering the doctor’s artificial expressions and acerbic insights. ‘She called me a righteous, reckless, twitchy, little man.’

Hannibal’s entire face lifted in a smile. ‘And why did she call you that?’

Will licked his lips, watching his companion closely. ‘I told her I planned to free you.’ Hannibal kept his smile. ‘And… I didn’t plan on you being recaptured. I told her…’ Will almost laughed at the absurdity of it ‘meat was back on the menu.’

Hannibal looked down at his drink, but not before Will caught what was almost certainly genuine delight. He needn’t have hidden it; his voice contained enough pleasure to convey the sentiment. 

‘Then you have already begun the game with Dr du Maurier.’

‘I…’ Will’s eyes refocused. He nodded, surprised. It was true.

Hannibal’s smile moved to one side of his mouth. Will couldn’t help but feel he looked altogether too smug. ‘And together, we will finish it.’ Hannibal declared, finishing his glass decisively. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote in this chapter is from Charles Baudelaire - Le Guignon, translated by George Dillon


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We see Bedelia, learn (a little) more of Hannibal's motivations, and Will fantasises about killing.

Massachusetts

**Day 8**

Bedelia sat, an open book on her lap, staring blindly into a dark corner of the living room. Still in her suit jacket and skirt, she had slipped off her heels and tucked her stockinged feet up beside her on the sofa. Her mind walked on other feet, wandered from her body, moving through a different time, a different place.

The memories were vivid and clear, attached – as they were – by thick strands of emotion to the neural structure of her brain.

Living with Hannibal had been the most intoxicating experience of her life, and she had long had a predilection for heady experiences. Never before had she felt so alive, and so dead, all at the same time. Giddy with the game of dare she was playing – with her life, with her sanity. She had felt… more. More _than_. More than the rest of the grubby little minds that snatched at her with their claws. In one sense Hannibal was no different, but at least he coveted her intelligence, and not – exclusively - her body.

She remembered the dinner with Anthony Dimmond, a repugnant man. Graced with some intelligence and some good looks, but without a shred of moral dignity.

The hypocrisy of the thought was not entirely lost on her, but she contented herself that at least she had some general dignity. The way that man had been eyeing her up at the dinner table, he might as well have just unzipped himself and laid his proposition on her plate.

The meal had stretched in excruciating slowness, and when she made the decision to provoke him it had taken very little effort. It only took holding a mirror to the thoughts that danced impertinently in his gaze. A single suggestive response about her husband’s pallet and, unsurprisingly, he had surged forward, unable – yet all too able – to believe his own luck.

‘Is it that kind of party?’

She had determined his fate merely by parroting his own kind of insinuation back at him, and Hannibal saw, in the same moment she did, the fate to which she had sentenced him. Hannibal had smiled to seal it.

If nothing else, she thought, after the bell had tolled, it had been worth it just to see Hannibal respond with his mouth half-full. ‘It's not that kind of party.’

‘It’s really not.’ Bedelia added with an ember of satisfaction, continuing to eat even though her appetite had been stripped away.

Bedelia realised her mistake at the end of the night, when Hannibal allowed the man to leave with his life. _What would you have me do Bedelia?_

Hannibal preferred to be unpredictable. His games would never go her way, and if they did, then she should have been careful what she wished for.

Her nerve finally broke in the Palazzo Caponi during the lecture on Dante, when the puffed up little rat actually made an appearance. The heavy hand on her shoulder a moment before, during the sound of the spoken word ‘betrayal’, had been the accelerant. Dimmond’s appearance had been the spark.

In the moment that Hannibal’s eyes had turned from the audience to greet and name the latecomer, Bedelia had fled with no more control over her movements than the rabbit when startled from the undergrowth.

She had packed quickly with the screaming voice in her head saying to get out, just get out, forget her belongings. She felt stuck in the tail end of a dream, when any logic and order had seeped away, leaving her in a snare of her own making. And sure enough, as she had approached the front door, the golden knob had slowly rotated.

The next few moments passed in slow dragging seconds of mortal terror and fascination. She barely registered when Hannibal began his verbal sparring.

‘Did you know what he would do?’ Hannibal asked, stepping in closer, the smell of blood saturating the air. ‘I’d prefer you answer honestly.’

Terrified, inebriated on fear and adrenaline, her lips had already begun to move with the lie, and there was a delayed reaction from her brain. She was telling him why _he_ acted, not why she acted. She couldn’t honestly tell what her own pathology was yet, all she could do was hold up that mirror, and show him what he wanted to see. Himself.

‘I was curious.'

‘Did you anticipate our thoughts? Counter-thoughts? Rationalisations?’

‘Yes.’ Because he would have. But the thought bubbled up from the pit of her vertiginous despair, that that wasn’t true… she had consciously thrown Dimmond under Hannibal’s pitiless hooves.

‘That, is participation.’ He concluded, and he was right.

In his own maddening way, he was always right. The weight of his conviction would stagger even Atlas, but he swung it around jauntily, as though it were a folded umbrella.

…And _that_ sounded like a thought Will Graham would have, she registered with disgust, standing up. The book, forgotten, fell to the floor. She refused to acknowledge it as she strode passed it to the decanter. That whining mongrel puppy, with his Swiss-army-blade-mind that so fascinated Hannibal.

The thought came swiftly, but left a long wake in her mind. Doctor Bedelia Du Maurier, no man’s fool. Until one man. Who had overlooked her for another.

She sighed down into the fumes of her drink, causing a backwash of smell that she closed her eyes to appreciate. She knew these thoughts were unreasonable. Will Graham had probably saved her life by - distracting - Hannibal for as long as he had.

She tried to raise a toast to the stubbled man-child, and couldn’t.

Atlantic City

Hannibal revealed that during his time in Italy it had required very little extra effort on his part to determine Bedelia’s passwords and learn of her resources, pseudonyms and contacts. This made finding her current location a relatively trivial business. Will sat with Hannibal at the dining room table, each with a laptop, note pads ranged around them.

‘Why do you want to kill Bedelia?’ he asked, as they charted out their route to the palatial ‘cottage’ she had rented. He had his theories, but wanted to know how Hannibal would express himself - not that this would necessarily be a true reflection of the creature inside.

Hannibal leaned back in his chair. ‘Doctor du Maurier courted death long before I began my courtship of her. When she was with me, it was him she saw.’

‘And who did you see when you were with her?’

As he spoke, and heard his own words, Will’s brain released a flood of neurotransmitters, and he experienced something very like a jolt of electricity through his body.

He looked away quickly, astonished that he had let the question out of his mouth. From the corner of his eye he watched Hannibal consider him, assessing his state of mind.

Peaceably, Hannibal replied, ‘I saw someone who was not you.’

The different possible interpretations of this sentiment fell like folds of silk to cover the well of Hannibal’s emotion almost perfectly.

Will folded his lips, eyes glued to the map, and grunted noncommittally. Hannibal tidied away his own expression, a slight smile, with a glimmer of amusement.

‘Doctor du Maurier has waited a long time for me to take her.’ Hannibal mused.

‘This is you, taking on the persona of death, in her mind?’

‘Yes.’ He paused, ostensibly to choose his next words. ‘Would you like to know what one of the cruellest things about opioid addiction is? This wonderful drug that nature produces in the cradle of her petals? Each time you take it, you require more of it to achieve the same effect. Take the same amount a second time, and the same ecstasy eludes you.’ Hannibal smiled, looking almost serene. ‘The advantage of Bedelia’s addiction being her own mortality, is that her final moment will be her greatest.’

Will hid the tightening in his gut. ‘You loved her. You still love her.’ Then, dismissively, ‘In your own way of course.’

The smile grew less serene. ‘Each of us loves differently. I have sentiment towards Bedelia, but not love, as I have come to understand it.’

Will writhed internally, supressing a scoff. He scrabbled for a safe topic.

‘And… eating her?’

When had cannibalism become a ‘safe’ topic? This disturbed in an entirely new way. Realisation landed that despite four years passing since he had last _partaken_ with Hannibal, he still didn’t care whether the flesh in his teeth was animal or… human. He’d crossed that line, acknowledged that he couldn’t tell the difference, and moved on.

He shivered, and Hannibal saw the direction his thoughts had taken and steered him away.

‘Don’t look over your shoulder Will.’ Hannibal said, though his eyes had been on his feet. ‘What were you thinking just now?’

‘That… I’m truly stunned… that I don’t care either way about…’ Easier to think than to say out loud.

‘Eating Bedelia du Maurier?’

‘Eating… people.’ Will said, and started to shake. He leaned backwards and groped for the arms of his chair.

  
_Around him the woods darken, and the wind thrashes in the trees. The moon shines down and coats the wild night in shades of black and blue. He sees prey in the distance… not a slow lumbering beast or a wounded animal… something fast. Agile. Something that moves in the dark and thinks itself a predator, something that would be fun to kill, to rip, to maim._

_He stalks it as it stalks, downwind of its prey as Will is downwind of his. He circles it as it closes in on its quarry, pausing to select its moment. Will moves with steady slow steps, dappled moonlight shimmering across the forest floor as the trees rattle their leaves in the tempest above him, his eyes fixed on the point in the underbrush he knows the predator will erupt from._

_The forest stills and time slows. Will waits with perfect steadiness, in the calm anticipation of success._

_The moment the predator lunges from its cover, Will leaps and twists in the air, catching the man by the throat and driving him to the ground. Landing together, they roll with snarls until Will pins the other man, and Will sees the eyes of Randal Tier blazing at him with defiance. Will holds onto his ears and slams his head back against the ground. The man’s eyes shake in his skull, but he still has a mocking smile on his face. Will leans back with disappointment ‘I already killed you...’ he whispers slowly. He looks down, finds a knife in his hand, and the disappointment fades._

_The knife pierces and slides into Randal Tier’s body. With his other hand he lifts Randal’s head and tilts it toward him so he can absorb every flicker of expression. He rips up and up through his torso, pulling the knife out only when it runs aground on the sternum. Will stares into his eyes, watching the predator’s fight go out of him as the blood laps out in a warm tide._

_Antlers shining black in the moonlight, Will opens his mouth and buries his teeth in the exposed throat. He rears back, tearing. The fountain of blood rains across his face and he lifts his eyes rapturously to the stars._

Will opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling, almost dizzy with elation, but with little remora of guilt still flittering in his belly and sucking at his teeth.

Lowering his head again Will caught Hannibal studying him with great interest, and scowled in response. Heedless, Hannibal made his enquiry. ‘Where did you go just then?’

Will rolled his neck. ‘Hunting.’

Hannibal twitched a smile. ‘Whom were you hunting?'

‘Randal Tier.’

‘Did you kill him the same way?’

‘No. I needed more. I ‘evolved’ it.’

‘Death is not your opiate Will. Nor, do I suspect, is killing, as you have feared. What is your addiction then?’

Will rolled his shoulders, trying to spread the relief into his muscles at the words, but the tension returned more quickly than an answer. He considered the feelings that drove the winds in his forest. ‘I think it’s… I don’t know. In those moments I feel I’m in complete control of myself, I’m not bending to anyone else’s… design.’

‘Do you speak with one mind, think with one mind, in those moments?’

Will canted his head, chewed at a lip, considered the blessed silence in his head, where chaotic thought was replaced with singular focus. He nodded.

Hannibal held his eyes and mirrored the action. ‘An acceptance of self; a merging of the aspects you feel you should reject. We are all required to relinquish our control, by choosing to live within society. It’s not just the laws of man, but their beliefs, their opinions. Most of us are born into the contract, and control over one’s own destiny must be consciously claimed.’

Will tilted his head, the Overton Window gained a new dimension in his mind, becoming a tunnel, through which all his assumptions had been syphoned.

Hannibal spoke over his thoughts, ‘You thought for a long time that I was trying to take your control. Do you still feel that way?’

Will shook his head, but it had more of a mystified air than a gesture of disagreement. His eyes drifted, forgetting to blink. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I think… you were trying to give me control.’ His eyes formed a film of water and he remembered to blink. ‘Sometimes I think you just subverted my entire understanding of what ‘control’ actually means.’

\--

Will craved simple food, but he could not begrudge Hannibal’s insistence on yet another elaborate culinary exercise after three years in captivity. He lingered in the kitchen when he might not have otherwise, knowing Hannibal wouldn’t _ask_ for his help, but that some tasks really were much easier with two hands. 

To Will’s senses, even after a week of each other’s company, the air still hummed with fine lines of tension strung through it. He wondered if Hannibal still expected the cavalry to come charging in and trample all over his newfound liberty. Nothing in Hannibal’s behaviour gave testimony to discomfiture, or pinpointed the exact nature of the unease, and Will wondered how much of the sensation was reflected by his mirror neurons, and how much of it belonged to him.

After dinner they sat by the fire again, and this time Hannibal convinced Will to try a fortified wine instead of whiskey. Will cradled his with scepticism, the back of his mind tracking some insecurity over how much less erudite he felt at times, in this man’s company. 

‘What was it about the Botticelli, or about Zephyr and Chloris, that so captivated you?’

Hannibal rolled some of the late vintage bottled port on his tongue. ‘You were in its presence too. What did you think of it, when you saw it?’

Truthfully, thinking back to that moment, all the paintings in the gallery had been muted wallpaper, eclipsed by the culmination of his hunt. The art blended in with Hannibal himself, an extension of his obsession with aesthetics and culture. None of it compared to the unfolding revelations and challenges in the words crafted between them, and Will’s mind had wrestled with the blade in his pocket.

Instead he thought back to his first proper impression of the painting, standing inside the off-hand inherited grandeur of the Palermo police station, studying Pazzi’s print, pulled from a manila file.

He didn’t know at the time who all of the characters were, although it had the look of a Greek myth. Most of the figures in the painting appeared serene and knowing, placid or distracted. On the right edge of the painting, two creatures tumbled into the tableau. At first he had thought the female of the pair had been entering the scene with another woman, and was being pulled away by the winged man, but the more he looked into their faces, the harder it became to read the story in the exchanges of their regard.

‘I thought… I could look at it, and study it, for a lifetime, and never fully grasp all its meanings.’

Hannibal nodded, apparently – in this case – accepting of Will’s limitations.

‘Your assessment is most likely correct.’ He paused, choosing from his own extensive store of knowledge for a suitable example. ‘Botanically orientated art historians have found five hundred different plant species in the painting. Of fifty-seven genera. At least one hundred and thirty known species of flower.’

Will took this in. ‘But it’s not the flowers that excite you, is it Doctor?’

Hannibal cocked his head. ‘Do you know the story Will, of Chloris and Zephyrus?’

‘I do now, I didn’t when I was first shown your… Il Monstro’s design. I had to learn more. The symbolism… eluded me.’

‘That must have been frustrating for you.’ Hannibal said without emotion. ‘And what did you discover?’

Will avoided eye contact. ‘That the god of the West wind becomes… fascinated, by Chloris. Abducts her, violates her, and then – in contrition – returns her to her world… deified, as a goddess. Spring.’

Without his art books around him, Hannibal was reduced to pulling up an image of the Primevera on the internet. He closed in on the face of Chloris, flowers spilling from her lips, and passed the laptop to Will, before settling back in his seat, notebook on his lap.

‘Do you see violation in her eyes Will, at the moment of her transformation.’

Will shook his head. ‘No.’ His voice little more than a breath, keeping his eyes doggedly on the screen.

Hannibal let the silence breathe for some minutes, his fountain pen making its smooth deliberate way across the texture of the paper. Finally he looked up.

‘Transformation always comes with a price. At the very least there is the loss of the original state. Trauma teaches us how to reach inside of us and pull forth only the parts that should survive. Our true selves.’

Will’s eyebrows were drawn, and after holding the words in his mouth to see how they tasted, said, ‘Without challenging our state of mind, we cannot have a true theory of mind.’

‘ “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” '

Will rubbed his forehead. Suddenly clarity faded, and a sweet cloying fog billowed around him.

_The smoke parts to reveal the wendigo stretched out lazily on a giant mushroom. An intricate glass hookah pipe nestles in its claws, and thick molasses smoke rises from its parted lips. It doesn’t speak, but the question rings out from its hollow eyes.  
Who. Are. You?_

_Around them, more mushrooms, and a forest where the very leaves dwarf them. Will’s eyes light on a tower of pale flesh, and as he raises his eyes to follow it, it tapers into a wrist, a limp hand, looming over the mound of mushrooms, tied to steel rebar. A row of them stretch away into the distance, sentinel pylons guarding a precious crop.  
The wendigo exhales another breath of sweet narcotic smoke, and Will realises Hannibal is talking again._

‘You look tired Will. Perhaps you should get some sleep. We have a late night ahead of us tomorrow.’

Will acknowledged this with a poor attempt at a disarming smile and a forced hum of a laugh, raising a hand to his eyes. He stood.

‘Yep. Yes. Good night, Dr Lecter.’

He walked from the room with agitation nipping at his heels, and retreated to the cold and empty corridors beyond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enough prevaricating - the dinner scene with honoured guest Dr du Maurier is up next :)
> 
> The quote in this chapter is from Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy


	4. Chapter 4

**Day 9**

Hannibal’s gloved hand turned the doorknob and found Bedelia’s house unlocked, which fit with his expectations. He stepped into the hallway and looked around with interest. Dark wood panels and impersonal art, few personal effects; not somewhere Bedelia intended to linger.

Will stepped in behind him, and shut the door softly. Hannibal marvelled at the man’s ability to look both tense and loose at the same time. Will turned an expression on Hannibal that seemed to ask if he was going to get stabbed again that night. Will could take care of himself – when he had a mind to do so – so Hannibal tilted an eyebrow in fond reproach and continued into the house.

Bedelia du Maurier – M.D., PhD, best-selling author, member of esteemed circles both socially and academically – brought her eyes up from the page. Her features, perfectly composed, seemed to tremble like the soft tip of a faun’s nose. Hannibal, standing in the doorway to the drawing room, held her eyes with damning affection. 

‘Dr du Maurier. “ _Your charity doth never shut the doors, against a just desire_ ”.’

It took her a moment to place the quote, her eyes half-closing in an aborted blink. 

‘You would put me in the lowest sphere of heaven?’ She asked faintly. 

‘The moon has always been my preferred celestial body, it would please me to see you there.’ He cocked his head, still expecting an answer to the question inherent in the quotation. 

‘Yes, I expected you would come eventually.’ She acknowledged, half-heartedly waving the matter away. ‘I didn’t see the point in locking the door.’

‘There are dangerous people out there.’ He chided gently, and stepped into the room. Bedelia’s eyes snapped beyond him and narrowed when they found Will in the hall. 

Hannibal glanced briefly at Will, looking darkly around the room, a small pleased smile tucked snugly into the corners of his mouth. The sight of it heightened his own amusement, and Hannibal looked back in time to see Bedelia take rake Will’s face. After an initial scathing assessment, she discarded him from her mind.

‘It’s nice to see you out on your own recognisance.’ She offered to Hannibal, her usual fire conspicuously absent as her eyes travelled over the fading yellow bruising on his face, his arm in its splints, the left half of his jacket draped over his shoulder like a cape. Hannibal watched the water beading on her eyelids, catching the light, shivering along her lower lashes. 

‘Do you have a pistol hidden in those cushions, Bedelia?’

Bedelia smiled faintly, she shook her head and a tear spilled down her cheek. 

‘Do you think, that if you don’t fight me, I will be more merciful?’ He asked, curious, pausing just out of reach. ‘It is as though you are bearing your throat.’

‘Perhaps this is a trap, set by the FBI. Did you consider that?’

‘Yes. I considered it.’ He said. He removed his jacket and folded it carefully over the back of a wooden chair, then sat down and crossed his legs. 

‘Will, would you mind going to the kitchen and seeing what Doctor du Maurier has in the way of wine? What colour, do you think, Bedelia?’

‘I’ll stick with spirits, thank you. But please, help yourself.’ She turned her face to Will, but not her eyes. ‘The kitchen’s through there.’ Acknowledging Will for the first time with this dismissal, her tone reserved for the staff. He took it in good humour, apparently as content not to speak with words as she was. The look he gave her, if she deigned to receive any of it through her peripheral vision, would have communicated enough.

Hannibal waited until they were alone. ‘That book you wrote was quite a hit. You have an active imagination.’ 

Bedelia flushed a little. ‘I suspected you would read it. I had… hoped… never to be in a position to discuss it with you.’

‘How does it feel, to be the victim?’

‘The survivor.’ She corrected automatically, before remembering the implications of her current predicament and swallowing. 

‘Do you think your book will experience another surge in popularity, after you are killed by the primary antagonist?’

‘Maybe you should only pretend to kill me. And we could find out.’ Hopelessness in her voice, hardness in her eyes. 

Hannibal allowed a faint smile to appear and fade from his mouth, looking down. ‘You were a marvellous psychiatrist, a wonderful companion. You could have been an astounding artist, if you had truly managed to shift your death wish from yourself onto others.’ 

Finally some heat began to return to Bedelia’s gaze, anger at his use of the past tense, his presumption at the intended compliments and his analysis driving her to her feet. His eyes followed her up and took in her fury with the same calm he had taken in her previous submission. She tore her eyes from his and marched to the drinks board.

‘So I’ve finished marinating I take it.’ She said acidly, pouring and lifting a nearly full glass of bourbon.

‘I’d say you’ve soaked in liquids long enough.’ Will reappeared with a bottle of red wine and two long stemmed glasses. Hannibal raised an eyebrow at the catty remark, always amazed at how rudeness from Will’s mouth only endeared him further. 

Bedelia sneered. ‘You had to bring your new pet with you.’ 

‘Will is partly why I am here Bedelia. In Italy you tried to manoeuvre me into eating him.’

‘I didn’t have to push you very hard.’ She muttered into her glass.

‘And then you betrayed me to Verger’s people. For which I am grateful. You inadvertently interrupted me on the path you had set me on.’ 

Bedelia glanced to Will, who pointedly stroked the old scar along his forehead with arched brows. 

‘It must be difficult to know that you can only kill him once.’ She returned to Hannibal. ‘Will you wait until he has passed his prime and he no longer interests you? That would surely diminish the experience. Or will you choose a moment when you are at the height of your mutual infatuation, brimming with poignancy, and cheat yourself of all the little moments that could have come after?’

Hannibal cocked his head. ‘I have no plans to kill Will.’ 

Bedelia snorted her disbelief. ‘One of you will be the death of the other, if you’re not the death of each other.’

Will’s composure rippled slightly, and he interjected. ‘We’ve already died together. This is resurrection.’

Bedelia’s glittering eyes flashed to him, tempted by the sliver of disquiet and deigning to include him. ‘So here you are, on the other side of the veil finally. I hope you’re more adequately armoured this time.’

The glimmer of his vulnerability proved an effective bait, and Will revealed the barb. ‘If you always fight wearing armour, then you’re ill equipped to fight unshielded. Tell me Bedelia, what will you do, now your armour is stripped from you?’

If Bedelia had an answer to that, she was unwilling to share it with her captors. Instead she touched her lips to her bourbon again, and Will took the opportunity to answer for her. ‘Just marinade further… what well behaved live-stock you keep Hannibal.’

Bedelia closed her eyes and the skin on her forehead tightened; Hannibal had witnessed the same expression on Bedelia when a protracted toddler’s tantrum interrupted their lunch beside the Arno River. Hannibal cast Will a doleful reproving look, intended to chastise, but undermined by the curve he couldn’t keep from his lips.

*

Hannibal had been compassionate enough to sedate Bedelia before retrieving his cut of meat. Bedelia had known which limb it would be, when he had Will tourniquet the leg before administering the dose; apparently not fond of the taste of his own medicine.

She awoke to the smell of fresh flowers, and a vague awareness of a needle bleeding into her. Full lucidity came back quickly then, as her heart took up the chemical and sluiced it through her veins. She was sitting at the table and, like the wound where her leg abruptly ended, she had been cleaned and dressed. He had chosen one of her most daring black tie dresses, the neckline plunged almost to her navel, the side-slit reaching to her hip; an acrotomophile’s dream.

She hiccupped a sob of distress. ‘There now.’ Hannibal’s voice gently soothed, as his hand came to rest on her shoulder. 

‘You took my leg.’ She whispered, stating the obvious more to try and believe it than to admonish him for it. 

Softly he murmured, ‘ “ _Although this corporal rind, Thou hast immanacl'd,_

 _With all thy charms, Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind_.’’’ The doctor paused. ‘You are not your body Bedelia.’

The truth of this filled her up, but could not dispel the horror. She felt light, as though she might float away. Her heart; she could feel it beating in her breast, and could not name all the different emotions it tried to pump at once. His reference landed again, and she turned her hitch of breath into a scoff.

‘But you are certainly Milton’s Comus.’ She breathed back. 

He smiled fondly at her. ‘I shall miss our little chats.’

‘But not enough to spare me.’

He leaned down so his face was level with hers and stroked her cheek with a patient thumb. ‘Bedelia, would you prefer the slow decay? You have no family to follow you, only the bitter praise of sycophants, and the empty admiration of those who believed your lies. I would make a truth of you. I would return you to a state of innocence.’ 

Bedelia, shaking, turned her face away. ‘May… I… have some wine now?’

Hannibal’s gaze continued to bore into her for a moment and then he stood, business-like again. ‘Normally I would advise against it, with the amount of analgesics in your bloodstream.’ 

He glided to the sideboard where a bottle of white wine chilled in an ice bucket. He carried the bottle over in a serviette, and poured it into her glass with a twist to catch the last drop.

She picked up the glass. ‘We are having oysters to start.’ He announced, placing the wine bottle back in the cooler. ‘I know how you prize them.’

Her smile was small, tight, and feigned. 

Hannibal and Will brought the leg in together, the platter too long for one of them to carry alone. They left it steaming on the table, wrapped in its ti leaves, to retrieve the other dishes from the kitchen, and perhaps for the psychological purposes of letting her stew with her leg. 

The intoxicating sensation she had experienced in Florence returned by degrees, and as the wine went to her head with the painkillers, she found herself almost smiling. Slowly, without looking, as though to trick even herself, she lifted the oyster fork from her side plate and brought it into the folds of her dress.

  
Hannibal carved while he and Will exchanged a tennis rally of cheap wit and self-congratulation. Bedelia wasn’t listening to the words. She had heard Hannibal being charming at dinner before, his words were always surprising, their cleverness less and less so. 

Instead she was drenched in the sight and smells of her leg in front of her, wondering how her stomach could turn over it while her mouth watered above.

Appalled. Fascinated. 

The leg, pinned to the board it had ridden in on, rocked fractionally as Hannibal gently slipped the blade between her cells. Single-handedly serving up her leg. The meat must have been cooked expertly; the knife slid straight through the burnished surface and the pale pink flesh underneath peeled away from the metal in identical slices. Bedelia’s bile rose and she shifted her focus to the cornicing at the ceiling instead.

Will approached with a plate; the meat, her meat, daubed in a crimson sauce, bedecked with edible ornaments. Her half lidded eyes stayed fixed above them and didn’t change as he reached her. She lunged for him suddenly with the fork, and he calmly caught her wrist. 

‘Ah ah ah.’ He remonstrated gently, twisting her hand until the fork dropped to the floor. 

She hissed in pain and he released her and put the plate down in front of her. The look they shared had more sincerity than any other they had exchanged that night. 

_Are you really going to do this?  
_

_I’m not going to stop it._

Her mouth turned up in an unpleasant smile. _Of course you’re not._

Will stepped away, took his own plate from Hannibal’s outstretched hand, and took his seat at the table.

The clock in the dining room chimed a note to mark the turning of the hour; ten o’clock. Hannibal raised his head at the sound, looking at its point of origin before moving his eyes to Bedelia. With Hannibal, no gesture was without purpose, and she tunnelled backwards to locate its origin.

_  
Bats chase mosquitos across the glowing clock-faces, and as the hour strikes ten, the warm Florentine night air is shivered by bells. Though muted through the windows, Bedelia knows Hannibal’s ears tune in to catch ringing in the air; wherever he is in the city he listens for them, he has said, for they are the last bells of the day, and so too the sweetest.  
_

_Bedelia lies in the bathtub, wrapped in a shell of relaxed tranquillity. Behind her, Hannibal kneels, fingers working through the silky soapy strands of her hair, his movements purposeful but slow. He appears soothed by the warmth of the water, and by the soft murmured questions Bedelia asks him, unassuming vagaries about his youth. She steers him towards the places he keeps locked below his ‘memory palace’, the populated oubliettes that never truly are forgotten.  
_

_‘How did your sister taste?’  
_

_She sees it then, and the triumph is euphoric. Betrayed in the flicker of his eye-lids, not quite a blink, she sees that she has thrust her arm down his throat, right into the very meat of him.  
_

_The sensation expands in her, rises up to consume her as she sinks down into the obfuscating water to cradle her treasure._

Hannibal took his own seat at the table, he glanced amenably at Will, gave Bedelia a lingering gaze, then he cut himself a piece of her calf. He ate it with closed eyes and a slight twist of his head. He swallowed, and looked at her with a mask of tenderness, ‘You certainly don’t disappoint.’ 

‘Why didn’t you kill me in Florence?’ Staring queasily at her plate, her voice sounded distant to her ears.

In her peripheral vision she could see Hannibal sharpen his focus until the full beam of his most direct gaze was upon her. 

‘There are places I dare not go, in my mind. You led me there to manipulate me, but you went too far. When you saw my eyes reflect the gatehouse of my dungeons, you couldn’t resist.’

‘So why didn’t you kill me?’ she repeated.

‘Because you hurt me.’ He said. ‘Betrayed me.’ She brought her eyes up to his again. ‘And I was too angry to give you what you wanted.’ He smiled. ‘But I have forgiven you.’

She shook her head, ‘I didn’t want this.’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘No.’ Her mouth worked, her eyes brimming again. She looked away, stretching her jaw.

Hannibal looked down demurely while he wiped his mouth with a napkin. ‘Since you have returned from Florence, what would you say has been the highlight?’

The question made her too angry to think. His implacability gave nothing for her anger to rebound from. So she did think. She thought back to the book launches, the interviews, the lectures, the sympathetic and eager smiles. Telling her how _brave_ she was _,_ how _strong._ The faces of her friends, closed to her now to hide the doubts they harboured. The ugly faces of the crowd, hungry to learn any intimate detail about her time in the belly of Hannibal ‘the Cannibal’ Lecter. 

Her eyes flicked without consent to the quiet spectator, who was chewing his dinner with no outward sign that it was her leg he was masticating.

Talking to someone honestly, even Will Graham, had been the highlight. Better than the same lies parroted ad infinitum, without the chance of any deviation or elaboration.

She sighed out into the void between her and her intruders. Since Florence, and before tonight, the closest she had felt to being alive was when Will had stood in her house and told her he was going to free Lecter. 

The civilised world she masqueraded through would never understand, and the part of her she cultivated to manoeuvre through that farce still did not, but this dance with Hannibal transcended society’s dim spectacles. They shared a universe of dark and profound truths couched in enigmas; blood and transition and death as the stakes upon which human life was strung. Others balked from these facets of existence and only lived half-lives. 

Her heart-beat quickened as she recognised that she had only pretended to fear these things. Her truth, emerging from its hibernation and yawning with gnawing hunger, settled on the edge of this moment with the satisfaction of an infinitely patient predator finally granted its meal. This was a fitting end; intimate, a flair of drama, a final opportunity to prove she accepted – craved – the inevitability of death. The final enigma. 

Another tear rolled down her cheek, but she smiled, tremulous and resigned. 

Internally still with brimming reverence, Bedelia reached out slowly and picked up her cutlery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you like it, I have a plan for more, but gonna take a short break, writing/posting 1 a days is not sustainable!
> 
>   
> There are some quotes and paraphrasings from other sources, (aside from the show and Thomas Harris of course) including:  
> Chapter 2  
> \- Charles Baudelaire - Les Fleurs du Mal: Le Guignon, translated by George Dillon   
> Chapter 3  
> \- Rene Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy  
> Chapter 4  
> \- Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto III  
> \- Milton – Comus (A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634)  
> 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bedelia's death and presentation.

Bedelia, without the sauce, tasted sharp, a hint of the sweet bitterness of cooked fruit. Delicious, of course, but Will thought it would probably suit a slightly dryer wine to counteract it.

The observation was too crude to share in front of the meat; out of respect for the atmosphere Hannibal had fostered, rather than for the sake of Bedelia herself. He wondered if Hannibal planned to take any more cuts of meat after the final curtain.

Watching their interaction, Will felt a little outside of the scene. He also felt a little outside of himself. He observed and ate with a contented satisfaction, enjoying the dreamlike quality the evening had acquired. The candles and Hannibal’s obscure choice in music, the emotion thick in the air, contributed to the surreal atmosphere; the leg on the table, Bedelia’s flesh slowly filling his stomach, made it simultaneously hyperreal. 

When Bedelia had picked up her silverware and joined them in their meal, Will’s hands had stilled momentarily, the entirety of his attention consumed by her moment of acquiescence. He absorbed her for a moment, and found no falsity, no brash desperation to save face; she had truly accepted her fate. His breath snagged on a thorn of awe, and he found respect clawing its way up into his chest. 

Will made a point of savouring her sacrifice more now that it had been voluntarily shared – albeit after the fact. The fruity bitterness he had first noted remained, it hadn’t been a purely psychological effect, but he now discovered subtler hints of cassis and cloves, a slight aftertaste of almond or aniseed.

At the end of the meal, Hannibal and Will cleared the table, and when Will resumed his seat, Hannibal knelt down next to Bedelia. From his pocket he produced a syringe, its cap still on. 

‘Would you prefer the needle? Or the knife?’ 

She brought her face down to look into Hannibal’s eyes. There was a silent exchange between them that Will couldn’t see, personal to the two of them, and they kissed. It was a chaste kiss, light but lingering. Hannibal pulled away and nodded, placing the needle back in his jacket pocket. 

‘You’re not quite the monster you’d have us all think you are, are you?’ Bedelia asked him. ‘A person suit, over a monster suit, over a person?’ 

Her soft voice, and the forgiveness in it, stirred something in Will’s chest, some part of himself he had thought had finally died when he’d heard Chilton’s screams on the Dragon’s recording. 

He felt himself wanting to lean forward and say ‘Wait.’ or ‘You don’t have to do this.’ 

He imagined there were two of him, one of them desperate, panicked, being held back by the other. Other Will examined what he could only think of as ‘Old Will’ with fondness and a little condescension as he struggled uselessly against him. It pleased him to know he was still there, but not enough to let him have his way. At least, not right now.

Hannibal stroked a lock of Bedelia’s gleaming hair. ‘You haven’t just seen behind my veil Bedelia. You have seen through your own. Once you see where your desire truly lies, it is hard to want anything else.’ 

Bedelia spoke thoughtfully. ‘You told me it was greed, before Europe, when I found you in my house. I didn’t… fully… realise what you meant at the time.’

‘But you see it now.’ Hannibal supplied, his eyes locked onto hers.

‘I do. How will you feel, when I am gone?’ She asked him, as he came in closer again, his brow below her chin.

‘You will not be gone, not to me. You will be free. Free from the web and the loom, the mirror and its shadows.’

He palmed the knife experimentally. He already had the measure of its weight, and Will realised he was stalling. 

‘Please.’ An eyebrow arched to accentuate her sentiment. ‘Don’t keep me waiting.’

Hannibal sat up properly on his knees and kissed her again, and this time she put her fingers in his hair and pulled him in with more emotion. The kiss lasted longer than Will was comfortable with, which is to say he was uncomfortable with it immediately and found the duration of it impossible to guess at retrospectively. Ten seconds? A minute?

Will’s eyebrows rose higher as Hannibal brought his hand up and slipped into Bedelia’s dress through the garment’s plunging neckline, beneath her breast. Will had to fight not to look away as Bedelia shifted and moaned against Hannibal’s lips. Suddenly her eyes went wild and she pulled her mouth from Hannibal’s with a ragged gasp. 

Thick red blood began to spatter down Hannibal’s forearm and rolled shirt sleeve. 

‘Will.’ Hannibal’s spoke with low urgency in his voice, and Will found himself leaping to his feet to reach Bedelia and steady her in her chair.

‘Let’s get her onto the floor.’ Hannibal suggested calmly, his hand on the knife still inside Bedelia’s body. 

Feeling Will’s arms, Bedelia leaned into them, letting him support her weight, and Will picked her up gently and laid her on the floor. She was spasming a little, pain and wonder fighting for space on her face. Hannibal leaned over her and kissed her forehead. 

‘I have only ever been the placeholder for the one you truly desire. He comes for you now Bedelia. Do you see his face?’

Bedelia’s mouth opened and closed, unformed words escaping expression, she nodded her head once in their stead. Her eyelids fluttered, her breath suspended, pinned in her chest with her heart. 

Tentatively, gently, not encroaching into her eyeline and hoping it wasn’t an unwelcome intrusion, Will leaned in and brushed Bedelia’s hair back from her face. Eyes still on Hannibal, she turned her face into Will’s palm fractionally, and he stroked her brow. 

Hannibal’s face was not as perfectly composed as Will had expected. He looked a little like he had the night he had cut Abigail’s throat.

‘Goodbye Bedelia.’ Will saw Hannibal’s shoulder shift, and Bedelia’s face changed again, her mouth opening wide, her body stiffening, a single ‘ah’ escaping her chest cavity. A moment there, as the knife pierced the walls of her heart, lingering in the stuttering chambers. Hannibal pulled back his hand; his knife and a river of blood followed. He dropped the knife and placed his crimson hand on her cheek. Their eyes locked together.

When death finally left her body limp on the floor, Hannibal gave her cheek one last affectionate stroke with his thumb, leaving a blood petal next to the red handprint on her face. When he raised his eyes to Will, there was water in them. 

Will’s breath faltered, the gaze too similar to the expression that preceded his own disembowelment, albeit without the betrayal and regret. 

Gesturing with a slight nod of his head towards Hannibal’s unshed tears, he managed to ask without criticism, ‘For her?’ 

‘A significant moment.’ Hannibal explained simply. The expression was forcibly smoothed from his face and he got to his feet, finding Bedelia’s napkin and picking it up to soak the excess blood that dripped from the fingers of his right hand. 

‘Now Will. Are you willing to forgo our usual digestif while we get the lady ready for her boat?’  


*

  
Under Hannibal’s close scrutiny, Will sewed up the wound in Bedelia’s chest and cleaned away the blood that clung to her. In another life, Will could have made a decent surgeon, Hannibal decided, if his mind could have withstood the ravages of responsibility. 

They placed her in a long white silk robe; it was not Hannibal’s preferred garment for his tableau, but in these circumstances getting an appropriate white dress that didn’t look matrimonial had been difficult. 

The small rowing boat Will had managed to source for them had been prepared earlier. Will had removed the little craft’s thwart, and painted Bedelia du Maurier’s name around the prow. Hannibal had looked over the work and judged Will’s penmanship efficient and tidy, if perhaps missing the elegant curves he would have preferred for the occasion.

They filled the boat with flowers, cushions, unlit candles, and a tapestry from the house that Hannibal had deemed appropriate. A tapestry was not essential for the scene, but fitting.

Arranged inside the boat as though gracefully asleep, Bedelia’s robe draped modestly to hide her single leg, her bright hair spilled around her shoulders. The light from the half moon filled the prow of the boat with its own ethereal liquid.

When Hannibal had finished positioning her just so, he paused and studied her face in death. He held before him the memory of her last moments of life, the moment before he had kissed her for the last time and delivered the blade.

_Her face, so close to his and shining with its own kind of light, had never looked more beautiful. He drew in the moment like a breath, savouring her warmth, bathing in all the elements of her epiphany. A unique mixture of expressions: the rare true vulnerability from when he helped her wash away the blood from her first kill; her desire for him the moment before they had tasted each others lips for the first time; and the glimmer of triumph she sometimes tried to suppress when winning an intellectual point._

Hannibal removed his glove and brushed a lock of her hair, then stepped out of the boat. 

‘You’re more sentimental than I gave you credit for.’ Will murmured, and Hannibal raised an eyebrow. 

‘You should know me better by now.’

‘Maybe I resist the idea. There’s a danger in letting myself believe such things about you.’

Hannibal nodded, pulling away from the conversation to focus on the little craft and its Pre-Raphaelitc cargo. They pushed out the boat together and watched as the current caught it and turned it into the river. Hannibal stood straight, gratified that Will remained standing close to his side. He leaned in a little so that their shoulders touched, and with a smile that belied his sombre tone, recited: 

‘ _And in the lighted palace near  
__Died the sound of royal cheer;  
__And they crossed themselves for fear,  
__All the knights at Camelot_.’

Will looked at him, surprised. ‘Camelot?’ His face closed and his eyes searched inwards, presumably scrolling through Arthurian legends; holy grails, swords in lakes, wizards and round tables.

‘Will you talk me through your design?’

‘You don’t want to unravel it yourself?’

‘Unless you particularly want me to, no. I feel I’ve spent enough time in your head, I’m trying to figure out mine at the moment.’

Hannibal had to admire the phrasing – of course he could talk Will into stepping into his mind, but by acknowledging this it would now be impossible to attempt it discreetly. 

‘The Lady of Shalott,’ he supplied instead, ‘was cursed to spend her life watching the world only through a mirror. Capturing it in tapestry as it passed her by, through a tiny reflected window that showed only the road that led to the city. She didn’t rail against her curse, hadn’t know anything different, just a wistfullness for experiences she would never truly have… _half sick of shadows._ ’

Hannibal paused a moment, watching the boat and its serene cargo drift further away. He lightened his tone. ‘Then, one day, gallant Sir Lancelot on his fine steed comes riding by, so full of life and colour that it is not even a choice… she must run to the window, and the curse falls upon her. 

‘But she sees, in that moment, the real world, the true scene from her window, a new and wider perspective. The knight, the water-lily, the city. She runs from her tower and into a boat, to sail forth and experience as much of the world as she can as she dies. And at the end of Tennyson’s poem, the same knight who spurred her from the loom sees her in her boat, he praises her for her beauty and prays for the delivery of her soul.’ 

After an appropriate moment to soak in the story and see how Hannibal was relating it to Bedelia, Will stated, ‘She affected him too. Though not to the same extent.’ He paused, and from his peripheral vision Hannibal could see him studying his chin, a tinge of gentle humour about his mouth. ‘Are you gallant Sir Lancelot?’ 

Hannibal’s lips twitched upward. ‘We all have our own Lancelots. She saw something she could not unsee; she didn’t need to understand it, but she had to chase it, even knowing it was her death.’

‘Did you ever think of trying to talk her out of the death-wish? Or did you just transfer her fascination with death to a fascination with you and take it from there?’

‘I tried to get her to externalise her feelings, in the hope it would solve them. But she clung to them too hungrily. Dealing death to others was anticlimactic for her, she always ended up feeling… overlooked.’

‘I always found her to be a fighter.’ Will replied, trying to source the uneasiness he felt.

‘She wanted death, but on her own terms.’

‘You said suicide is the enemy.’

Hannibal looked at him in surprise. ‘It is.’

‘But you are happy to hand out death to those who want it?’

‘It all depends on context.’

‘You don’t care about morality.’

‘Morality and mortality… I do care about these things Will. I have just formed my own opinions on where their values lie.’ The stream carried Bedelia’s little boat out of sight, beyond the hanging branches of the broad trees that lined this part of the river, around the bend and out of sight. Hannibal let his gaze linger there a moment longer, turning his torso towards Will and placing a hand on his shoulder. ‘As you must form your own.’ 

He stepped back, ran his eyes over the splintered wooden dock, and once satisfied, walked back toward the car. 

Will lingered behind, then Hannibal heard his footsteps quicken to overtake him to reach and unhitch the boat trailer. Hannibal slid into the passenger seat, confident Will would only resent any attempted assistance. 

Climbing into the car, Will regarded the trailer out the wing-mirror as he removed his gloves, a wrinkle in his brow indicating his dissatisfaction with abandoning a perfectly good boat trailer. 

Will slid the key home and started the engine, navigating the uneven road surface, and only looked at Hannibal in the passenger seat once they turned onto smoother roads.

‘She’ll be found quickly.’ He accused. ‘We could have got away cleanly, been assumed dead. You want them to know we’re still alive.’

A statement, not a question, and the delivery timed after the event, not when objection could make a difference; Hannibal remained silent. 

Will prompted. ‘ “ _And they crossed themselves for fear, All the knights at Camelot_ …” You want Jack to know we survived.’

‘ ‘Missing – presumed dead’ would not be a satisfying end for Jack. I would not deny him his own Lancelot.’

Will sighed, checking the road and turning them left towards Bedelia’s rented house. ‘How considerate of you. What a gallant knight you are, to be Lancelot for so many.’ A mocking tone, echoing the delivery of pointed praise after Chilton’s ruination. _What a cunning boy you are._

Hannibal allowed a tiny crease in the corner of his mouth. ‘If I am Jack’s Lancelot, then you are his Guinevere. For I have stolen you away.’ 

He examined Will’s reaction carefully from the edge of his vision, seeing how this statement would land. Will’s jaw flexed, but otherwise he kept his expression and tone neutral. 

‘You’re mixing metaphors. You’re casting Jack as Arthur, rather than the lady of Shalott.’ 

Hannibal gave one of his near invisible shrugs. ‘Either way, Lancelot has his own loyalties, and cannot give that Lady or his King what they wish.’

Will sighed in defeat. ‘I don’t remember the Arthurian legends well enough to know how it ended for Lancelot or Guinevere, but I’m guessing it’s not an uplifting tale.’

‘Fortunately, we’re not doomed to follow any fate but our own.’ 

‘Plenty of doom in our story.’ Will muttered. 

Hannibal pondered the melancholy that had crept into his mercurial companion. As he had tidily sown together the edges of Bedelia’s fatal wound there had been only veneration and acute fascination. Will felt things more than others; the come down from such a dizzying height no doubt left his defences weakened against the demons of remorse. He would allow Will to wallow in his self-flagellation for a time – eventually he would come to see it for what it was: a pointless expenditure of energy. 

The gods didn’t sit in judgement. The only ones who pointed accusing fingers were the mortals, pigs and men who had no more authority in their hypocrisy than outraged seagulls fighting over scraps.

\- - - 

Hannibal closed the French doors behind him, shutting in the smell of bleach, and breathing in the scented night air with some relief. He walked across the patio to join Will, who stood at the stone balustrade looking out across the moon shadowed garden. 

Aware of Hannibal’s approach, Will said, ‘Night, when life is most like a dream.’

Hannibal mulled this, recognised that they were not Will’s words, and met them with a quote of his own. ‘‘ _Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake_.’’

Will sighed out a breath and drew his gaze back from the dark edges of the lawn beneath them, turning it on Hannibal.

‘Are you satisfied now? Can we leave the country?’

Hannibal caught the mixed emotion in the question. 

‘If that is still what you wish?’

Will rubbed absently at some lichen on the balustrade. 

‘Yes.’ His tone disagreed.

‘But?’

‘It’s nothing. I’ll feel differently in the morning.’

‘Why don’t you tell me now? We can compare it to how you feel tomorrow.’

Will pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I’d rather have time to reflect on it alone.’

Hannibal remained outwardly motionless, but a band of tension circled his lungs. Patience, above all else, patience was required.  
‘It is time to drive back. Sleep on it tonight. You can tell me in the morning if I must delay or cancel our travel arrangements.’

Will nodded, avoiding eye contact, a downward twitch on his mouth. Hannibal laid a hand on his shoulder, taking great care to leave a suitable distance between them. 

‘Reaching hitherto unforeseen heights does not necessitate burrowing to equivalent depths. There are other ways to obtain a measure of balance.’

Will’s eyes lifted briefly to brush against his own gaze, fleeting contact, and he nodded, stepping back so that Hannibal’s hand fell away, turning and walking in the direction of the car. Hannibal followed his retreating form with his eyes and then his feet. He took one last look at the now empty house and allowed his own satisfaction to wash back in, banishing Will’s discomfort. It had been a most diverting evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More coming soon...  
> 
> 
>   
> There are some quotes and paraphrasings from other sources, (aside from the show and Thomas Harris of course) including:  
> Chapter 2  
> \- Charles Baudelaire - Les Fleurs du Mal: Le Guignon, translated by George Dillon   
> Chapter 3  
> \- Rene Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy  
> Chapter 4  
> \- Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto III  
> \- Milton – Comus (A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634)  
> Chapter 5  
> \- Alfred Lord Tenysson – The Lady of Shalott (revised 1842 edition)  
> \- Henry David Thoreau – Walden  
> 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uh-oh Will... what's happening to you?

Atlantic City

_My poor Muse, alas! what ails you today?  
_ _Your hollow eyes are full of nocturnal visions;  
_ _I see in turn reflected on your face  
_ _Horror and madness, cold and taciturn._ _  
  
_ _– The Sick Muse, Baudelaire_

**Day 10**

The early morning sun slanted through the kitchen windows in thick beams of golden light, casting Hannibal into a fine mood as he made breakfast. Streaming in the background, at a volume he believed would not disturb Will, the London Philharmonic Orchestra were playing Schubert in the Royal Albert Hall. The sizzling of diced vegetables in the pan was a pleasant second score. 

Hannibal turned towards the refrigerator and a picosecond hesitation betrayed his surprise. His neutral face and posture carried him on through to the end of his planned movement, then he paused at the appliance door to turn his eyes to Will. 

Barefoot in boxers and a t-shirt, Will had inserted himself into a corner of the kitchen, completely still and silent and alert. His face and posture were carefully poised. Hannibal – whose senses usually gave him advanced warning of everyone’s movements – could not tell how long he had been there. 

‘Good morning Will.’ He said politely. ‘Can I get you some coffee?’

Will remained expressionless, his eye contact direct and glacial. Hannibal moved his head slightly to the side, appraising Will, then approached him. 

He stopped again a meter or so from the man. Will’s eyes had tracked him, he didn’t appear to be in a fugue state. Hannibal felt a prickle of danger run along the back of his mind. 

‘It is Will, isn’t it?’

Will smiled slowly, a smile that cut through his face and turned its corners up like a theatre mask, but the emotion in his eyes was not amusement; it was murder.

His eyelids flickered then, and he rocked slightly on his feet. Blinking and looking around the room, his eyes rested on Hannibal again with a wrinkle of confusion between his brows. ‘Hannibal?’

‘Good morning Will. Can I get you some coffee?’

Will rubbed a hand over his features. ‘Yeah. Yes please. That would be good.’

Hannibal pulled out a chair at the table for him as he preceded him into the kitchen island, returning his attention to the gas hobs. Will lowered himself into the seat, looking down at bare legs and boxers in surprise when they met the cold surface of the chair.

‘Where were you just now?’ Hannibal asked mildly as he tossed the vegetables, and added a sprinkling of herbs to the mix. 

‘Uh, still half asleep I think.’ Will deflected vaguely with a queasy smile. 

Hannibal supressed a frown and poured him a measure of Ecuadorian roast. Will briefly met his eyes when receiving the cup, the passing transaction of their gazes serving as Will’s thank you. 

Inhaling deeply, Will closed his eyes to take in the vapours steaming up from the hot coffee. Hannibal pictured the serotonin rushing through the gates in his brain as he anticipated his caffeine needs being met.

‘Did you dream?’ Hannibal asked, breaking off his scrutiny to rinse and dry his hand before unwrapping a slab of pork belly and cutting thin strips of bacon from it. ‘Would you tell me about them?’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t remember.’ Hannibal looked at him sceptically, and Will laughed dryly. ‘Seriously. It’s all…’ his gaze went distant again. ‘Murky.’

Hannibal nodded, waited a considering moment as he integrated new information into his strategy, then announced, ‘I think we had best delay our plans for Indonesia.’

*

Will had been watching Hannibal’s knife glide through the meat. Having deflected the conversation from uncomfortable dreams, he focused instead on being disgruntled at the wayHannibal had adjusted to having only one usable arm as though two had always been a superfluous and unnecessary luxury.

Hannibal’s statement scythed through him, and through the rent in his sail, all his resentment escaped, leaving him slack. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t think you are ready yet. I’m not confident that you’re properly processing the current paradigm shift in your life.’

Will practically choked. ‘You think I’m unstable.’ The thought was a greasy clammy hand on the back of his neck, an echo of Alana’s rejection rebounding off the walls of his own fear. 

Rotating the chopping board to begin cutting the bacon into lardons, Hannibal looked at him with one of his carefully meted out facial expressions. Not concern, not pity, but an indulgent patience that made Will want to scratch his eyes out. 

This rebound between vulnerability and vicious anger continued to ricochet, confirming as it did so the accusation of his instability. The longer Hannibal waited to dignify his question with an answer, the greater the widening gyre of his thoughts.

Tipping the board of lardons into the pan of cooking vegetables and giving it a solid rap against the edge of the skillet only released _most_ of the diced bacon, and Will heard Hannibal gave a slight sigh. He put down the board and gathered up the remaining morsels to toss them in after. Will grappled to hold onto the savage smile of satisfaction that threatened to lay itself out across his mouth at Hannibal being caught in inconvenience. 

Hannibal’s eventual and entirely rational response managed to hobble Will’s petty mirth.

‘There’s not much point in going to our safe house just to draw attention to ourselves. We should allow your mind and body to exorcise your demons here.’

Clearly not a no; once again the reigning champion for instability. Will felt his heat rise and he snarled, ‘Is that what you want, for me to exorcise my demons? Because you’d probably be the first to get evicted.’ He stood up. ‘I’m going to get dressed.’ 

‘Breakfast will be ready in five minutes.’ 

‘I won’t be that long.’ 

In actual fact, he was much longer. He resisted the appetising smells wafting through the house, wishing he could block the stimulation in some way that wasn’t literally cutting off his own nose to spite his face.

He took a shower, scalding, and tried to let the painful water scorch the unsettled feeling from him. Twenty minutes of hot water and a fresh pair of clothes left him feeling tender but more present.

Forcing himself to the kitchen, almost embarrassed at what might have been interpreted as sulking, he found his plate being kept warm in the oven, Hannibal’s dishes already washed, and the man himself absent.

He ate the breakfast with guilty reluctant enjoyment, quickly at first and then slowing down to savour it. Somehow it was even more enjoyable when he didn’t have to hide his full appreciation from Hannibal’s greedy gaze – the man had ego enough. Sighing in disappointment at the unworthy thoughts he cleaned his plate, wiped down the table, and went to find his… captor? Friend? Fellow fugitive? Murder husband?

Will ground his teeth at the labels, none of which fit. Hannibal, intelligent psychopath that he was, was right. He needed to sort through his mind, and doing it alone was getting him nowhere, but letting Hannibal into his thought processes would not necessarily help him get anywhere but further into the mire.

Hannibal had established himself in the study, sitting at the polished desk with the laptop open. Will sat down in one of the armchairs by the unlit fireplace. 

‘Thank you for breakfast.’ He said to the swept ashes.

‘You’re welcome.’ Hannibal replied to the laptop screen, with infuriating cordiality.

Will couldn’t supress the bitter laugh that rose in his throat. ‘Do _you_ now see me as a fragile tea cup?’ he snapped. 

‘Are you looking for an argument Will?’ Calm, he was so calm, attention still on the computer. ‘You know I don’t see you that way.’

‘No, I’m the mongoose.’

‘You were a mongoose. Now you are more. Much more. But you still fight yourself, and I would see your inner conflicts resolved.’ Despite the praise delivered in a light tone, Hannibal’s eyes remained averted.

‘You can’t cure me of my empathy Doctor.’ Will exhaled, letting some of the anger out with the breath. ‘As long as I have the scope to see all perspectives, my own will always be caught in conflicting currents.’

‘Only if you let it.’ 

Will dropped his head into his hands, accidentally knocking the wound in his cheek and catching his breath at the sudden flare of pain. 

‘What are we going to do instead, if we don’t go to Indonesia?’ He asked when it had abated a little. Despite his hesitation the night before, he realised he was disappointed that sun and simplicity were being taken off the table.

‘We will go to the woods.’ Hannibal said, relentlessly absorbed in his task. ‘Near Quebec. Nature for you, culture for me.’ 

‘Quebec has culture?’ The vague bias against Canadians, his birth-right as an American, colouring the question in an effort at humour.

‘At the very least, it has the influence of three.’ Hannibal replied levelly, still refusing to be baited to anger or amusement. 

Will nodded, letting his attempted wisecrack bleed out. 

Being close to nature sounded good. It could be seen as a way of trying to escape the world, but nature could also be a tool for lathing away confusion. 

‘You think we’re going to make a mess there?’ He intuited. ‘Indonesian islands are too small to get away with the sort of destruction you think my soul-searching is going to require?’

Hannibal finally raised his eyes, impassive but not aloof. ‘Destruction is not always detrimental. It is often necessary in the pursuit or manufacture of something greater.’ Hannibal paused but held the silence, something in his face indicating he had not yet finished speaking. ‘As foolish as it might be to have any predictions of a future, I could see a life in Indonesia where you mended boats and I mended bodies. Where you learned to shed what had been imposed on you, and discovered how you truly wanted to live as yourself.’

The break in his words suggested he was not finished, but that a response would be appropriate. 

‘That does sound… nice.’ Will conceded – positive reinforcement that, while not creative, was sincere at least. 

Hannibal continued. ‘But you cannot learn anything of or from the world outside if you are still doing battle in your breast.’

Will thought back to their conversations about the Red Dragon, and repeated Hannibal’s quote to him at the time, something scathing in his tone. ‘ ‘ _Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast, And one is striving to forsake its brother.’_ _’  
_

Hannibal’s pleasant expression failed to completely mask the defensiveness in his response. ‘Despite what you may think, I have no wish for you to be the Faust to my Mephistopheles.’ 

‘No, well Mephistopheles lost his bet over Faust’s soul didn’t he?’

‘In Goethe’s version, yes. But I would not have you be Marlowe’s Faustus either.’

‘Who would you have me be?’

Something hard moved behind Hannibal’s eyes, something disapproving and stern in the lay of his mouth. ‘Who would _you be_ , Will?’ A reprimand. 

Will met the gaze squarely, refusing to be cowed, and something that looked like genuine fatigue passed over Hannibal’s features.

‘I am not trying to mould you into something Will. I am giving you the tools to mould yourself.’

Will felt the division again; a part of him that wished to reach out and apologise for being unfair, and another part of him that raged at the absurd piety of the statement.

‘You… gave me… encephalitis!’ He spat out, anger shouldering aside the other emotion. 

Hannibal loosened fractionally, as though relieved, which added fuel to Will’s ire. He stood elegantly, a hand smoothing down his shirt jacket, and came to sit opposite Will in one of the armchairs. When he was properly seated, he accepted Will’s furious eye contact, and said amiably, ‘I did not give you encephalitis.’

‘Oh, no, you just – _hid_ it from me, induced seizures, and killed my doctor. _And_ framed me for it. Out of curiosity!’ A half laugh choked in incredulity. 

‘Not only curiosity.’

‘What else then? Sadism?’

‘You were used to living with so much fear and pain Will, inured to it. Your ore is that of a refractory metal, tantalum or tungsten perhaps, with a high temperature threshold. To help you forge yourself, your crucible had to be especially hot.’

‘You played with my life. My sanity. My freedom, my reputation…’

‘You were already playing with your life and your sanity. So was Jack.’

‘But you changed the whole game!’

‘The game always changes, so do the stakes. It’s an important lesson to learn.’

‘So – sorry – you’re maintaining that you were doing all of that _to_ me, _for_ me?’ Will recognised as he was speaking the note of hysteria creeping into his voice, and reeled himself in, tucking in his chin and blinking rapidly. 

‘Psychiatrists who dehumanize patients are more comfortable with painful-but-effective treatments, and experience better results.’ The cadence and delivery of these words suggested he had used them to justify other reprehensible acts in the past.

Will’s jaw muscles bunched, but the words called to mind what Bedelia had delivered in the asylum, before the distorted confirmation of his – relative – sanity.

_I am convinced Hannibal has done what he honestly believes is best for you_.

‘Bedelia… told me... the traumatized are unpredictable because you know you can survive.’ 

She had counted herself and Hannibal in their number. She had said it to Will as though he were joining an elite society. _You can survive this._

‘And I knew you would survive. ‘ Hannibal echoed the words in Will’s head. ‘I told you that I had huge faith in you Will, I still do. Your change is upon you, but you are still emerging from that cocoon, and the fullness of your new shape has yet to be revealed.’

A thousand more protests sparked along the neurons of Will’s brain, clamoured for a place on his lips, but he sighed them away and looked at the curled corner of the rug, wishing a dog would materialise in situ. Imagined Winston raising his world-weary affectionate eyes to meet his without judgement. Imagining any hound that could give him uncomplicated and sincere devotion.

He pushed the thought roughly away, angry with himself for wanting that. He was angry with himself for more than that, and angry with Hannibal, angry with Jack, angry with the FBI, the world… 

*  
Hannibal watched the flames of contention begin to dwindle in Will’s eyes, then the fire stoked up again, and just as abruptly turned to ice. Will’s eyes rose from the floor to fix onto his own gaze with that burning chill. Hannibal cocked his head a little, shifting his folded hands a little further down his lap as he leant forwards.

‘Will?’

The edges of Will’s mouth curled up a little, and he began to sway very slightly, somewhat reminiscent of a cobra, his eyes locked on Hannibal, who watched him back with small smile of his own forming.

‘Hello again. It’s nice to meet you properly.’ He said formerly, leaning back into his chair. 

Will followed his movements closely, looking very much as though he were generating some form of extra energy, or drawing it from the air around him. As with a wild animal, Hannibal felt the mounting tension of sustained eye contact and decided to cede the supposed dominance characteristic to the competition. 

Hannibal looked down to brush something non-existent off his jacket. ‘When we met in the kitchen I wasn’t sure who you were. I see it now.’ He returned his eyes to Will’s. ‘When I first emerged, I chose not to speak for two and a half years. I hope, with someone sympathetic to talk to, you may find something to say a little sooner.’

The Will-who-was-not-Will smirked at him, but there was something in the crude slant of his lips that was too intriguing to be offensive. Instead of mocking or belittling, it seemed to invite Hannibal to drop his own person suit, take leave of his vocabulary, and just _be_ the monster that he was. The glower and twist of the lips was an invitation, and he felt his own nature rise in response, but Hannibal knew if he accepted now it would mean the death of one of them. 

It was fairly evident that Will’s particular pathology was to meet the power of another, and fight it at its own game. The only other predator in proximity was Hannibal. Will wanted to test himself against Hannibal, claw to claw and tooth to tooth, but it didn’t spring from his desire for revenge or retribution – it was a primal thing: bloodlust.

Opting for the strategy that had worked when Will had held him at gunpoint in his own kitchen four years ago, he looked away, partially baring his throat to one again cede dominance. 

As he stood up to move back to the desk, he could see from his peripheral vision that Will was still not Will, but there was a wariness there, and dissatisfaction. 

‘Now, if you don’t mind, I must get back to the logistics.’ He said, dismissing Will – and that which was not Will – from his attention. It continued its analysis of him as he sat down and started typing, studying him for long minutes before standing and prowling from the room. Hannibal mentally followed its footsteps away down the hall, towards Will’s room.  
  
*  
Lunchtime came and went, unobserved by either party. Will emerged from his room as the evening darkened the skies to find Lecter laying out fish in the kitchen, with a chilled glass of white wine and Act 1 of Delibe’s Lakma colouring the air. Hannibal was already reaching to turn it down as Will appeared in the entrance to the room. 

‘Are you doing something to me?’ Will accused before Hannibal could offer one of his customary greetings, his tone level but arms defensively folded.

‘How do you mean?’ Hannibal responded without offense.

Will’s mouth frowned and he dipped his head, his hair falling over his eyes. ‘I lost time. I think.’

‘You think?’

‘I woke up in my room. I don’t remember going there.’

‘You were acting strangely.’ Hannibal acknowledged, adjusting the apron he had somehow managed to tie with one hand. 

‘Strangely how?’ Will demanded with clenched stomach muscles. 

‘We were discussing my part in your transformation. You grew quiet and distant, and then you left. It didn’t seem too out of character at the time.’

Will glared at that, and then rearranged his features to concede that this was perhaps a fair observation. He came further into the kitchen, looking at the fish on the counter and deciding that feeling useful may improve his mood. 

‘Would you like me to prep those?’

‘Thank you, that would be most appreciated.’ 

Hannibal moved aside and Will washed his hands and went to the counter. Drawing a knife from the wooden block, he turned to look down at the speckled cutthroat trout, admiring the sleek little bodies arranged on the chopping board.

As he reached out to pick one up he felt an unmistakable sting in his neck. He jerked, throwing back his head, but Hannibal had already stepped deftly away, the spent needle held loosely in his fingers, and he was retreating further as Will turned on him with the knife.

Will took a step forward and collapsed. He heard the knife skitter across the floor and watched Hannibal’s shoes approach again. His lips pulled back to bare his teeth, and then heavy darkness sucked him through the floor of his mind.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know if you're enjoying this, it helps with the writing!
> 
> There are some quotes and paraphrasings from other sources, (aside from the show and Thomas Harris of course) including:  
> In Chapter 2  
> \- Charles Baudelaire – Les Fleurs du Mal: Le Guignon, translated by George Dillon  
> In Chapter 3  
> \- Rene Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy  
> In Chapter 4  
> \- Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto III  
> \- John Milton – Comus Comus (A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634)  
> Chapter 5  
> \- Alfred Lord Tenysson – The Lady of Shalott (revised 1842 edition)  
> \- Henry David Thoreau – Walden  
> Chapter 6  
> \- Charles Baudelaire – Les Fleurs du Mal: La Muse Malade, translated by William Aggeler  
> \- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust, Part 1, Act 1, Outside the City Gate


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've re-edited chapters 1-6, and am still re-editing 7 - 9, so the POV shifts may get a little clunky from here on out... (Aug 29th 2020)

Day 12

Will woke under thick blankets, the scent of pine in his nostrils and cold fresh air on his face. The room was unfamiliar. The window was open, light streaming in through curtains that stirred restlessly, revealing little more than the tops of trees and a white sky. Through the floorboards the smell of cooking meat rose to overlay the smell of pine.

Will wondered, with a calmness that surprised him, whether he was smelling his own flesh cooking. He shifted in the bed and was relieved to quickly ascertain he was whole – or at least as whole as he had previously been. The question that chased its unsavoury predecessor was whether or not he _would_ wake, one of these days, to the smell of his own meat. It had nearly happened once, and here he was again, drugged and manhandled by a megalomaniac who believed they were family.

He managed to sit up and came to realise that, aside from feeling hungry and a little dizzy, he didn’t feel in too much of stupor. He checked the door was unlocked, and after pausing to put on some additional clothes, moved out into the top landing of whatever house they were in. If Hannibal had been telling the truth, then there was a chance they were in Canada.

Will wondered if he should try and find a weapon, but decided if Hannibal was letting him wander about, he probably didn’t intend on harming him just yet.

The stairs were as good as a guard dog, each step creaking, each with a different note of strain. As a result, it was less surprising this time that Hannibal was already pouring him a coffee when Will found him in the kitchen. Hannibal met his eyes with hospitable neutrality as he passed him the cup. Will received it with flat unimpressed acquiescence and retreated again to stand with his back to the wall.

‘You obviously needed the sleep.’ Hannibal said matter-of-factly and looked at his watch. ‘The drugs should have worn off eight hours ago. It is now four o’clock.’

‘And what day is it?’ Will asked dryly, taking a sip of his coffee from the other side of the room.

‘Monday.’

‘What happened to Sunday?’

Hannibal’s smile bordered on rueful. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, I don’t always travel well with others.’ Will’s eyes did not liven, he continued to look at Hannibal with unresponsive distrust. One of Hannibal’s brows lifted fractionally. ‘And I couldn’t risk you losing time while we made the journey here.’

Will thought back to their last conversation, two days ago and in a different country. ‘So you believed me then?’

‘I have never known you to invent or overstate your mental aberrations, usually you try to downplay them.’

Will’s eyes narrowed. ‘You know this isn’t okay, right? You know you can’t just incapacitate me and move me around like a puppet.’

‘I would rather not have to.’ Hannibal readily agreed. ‘But as I have an idea of what may be afflicting you, I thought it best to act decisively.’

This finally, induced some genuine expression on Will’s face. ‘Do share.’ He said, with acidic courtesy.

‘I will. But you must be hungry?’

It was true, but Will was in no mood to eat. ‘Just… tell me.’

Hannibal drew out a chair and sat at the rustic wooden table that occupied the centre of the kitchen, patently waiting for Will to do the same. Moving guardedly into the centre of the room, Will took a chair of his own with simmering truculence.

‘When you first started losing time, around the time of your encephalitis, I believe it was a mixture of short-term memory storage issues and dissociative uncoupling of action from narrative thought. This time however, I believe your missing time and associated symptomatology is a result of something that requires immediate redress.’

‘Oh? You don’t want to watch me go crazy again?’

Hannibal smiled fondly. ‘As much as your madness was a sight to behold, I think we have both moved passed that stage in our friendship.’

Will barked out a pained laugh. ‘So what is it this time?’

‘With your pure empathy, I would say you have always been at risk of psychic fragmentation, and what you are currently experiencing may very well be the start of Dissociative Identity Disorder.’

Will winced. ‘Multiple personality disorder? That’s just fiction-’

Hannibal interrupted him. ‘Many of its representations in the media are fictitious and inaccurate, but I can assure you DID is real. Approximately 1% of American adults are afflicted by it.’

Will thought for a moment. ‘Two million Americans?’ 

‘Or thereabouts.’

‘And what makes you think that I’m… splitting… in that way?’

Casually, as one might remark on a chance encounter with an old acquaintance in the street, Hannibal replied. ‘I met the other you.’

All of the hairs on Will’s body stood on end, as though he were in the presence of an electrical field. ‘What?' Hannibal just blinked at him, watching the colour drain from Will’s face, and a slight sheen come to his skin, the beginning of perspiration. ‘When?’

‘On Saturday, during our conversation in the study.’

Will’s eyes travelled the room, skipping along objects and finding no comfort or familiarity in any of them. ‘What did I say?’ he asked, his voice taught.

‘You didn’t say anything. You, smiled at me.’

Will vigorously scratched at the stubble on his uninjured cheek. ‘And that was enough to make you think I’d snapped?’

‘A lot can be gleaned from behaviour and body language. And your silence itself was a perturbed response.’

‘A perturbed response.’ Will echoed dully, trying to force this unwieldy information through the receptors of his mind. His mouth worked, questions fighting each other for priority in his throat. ‘How did I seem?’ He asked, and the anger had left him, left him vulnerable.

‘Like the monster you feared you would become.’

Will reeled at the words. ‘No.’ He stood up, his chair skittering back across the wooden floor, backing away until the kitchen counter stopped him. ‘You – ha! You finally did it. You drove me mad!’ Hands flying up to cover his face.

‘Madness can be a medicine for the modern world. You take it in moderation, it's beneficial. It can boost your psychological immune systems and help fight the existential crises of normal life.’

‘There’s nothing normal about my life anymore.’ Will panted at him, nearly hyperventilating. He clamped his eyes shut, tucked his chin into his shoulder, fists clenching and unclenching at his ears.

‘You are not going to go insane. What is happening to you can’t happen to just anyone. Look how much Chilton has endured, and yet there is nothing in him to transform. His travails will never lead him to epiphany or evolution. Unaccountable things happen to you, but it is how you react to them that determines your fate.’

Will brought his hands from his ears to press into eyes. ‘In Bedelia’s mind you were the personification of death. In your mind you’re… entropy, disorder. You’ve taken it on yourself to be the living embodiment of chaos?’

‘Chaos is a two sided coin. Destruction on its own is an ugly sin. But nothing I do is without purpose, not even killing. Creation is a process of change, stagnation as detrimental as blind destruction. Change is only briefly chaotic, and that chaos is not evil.’

‘And if I’m _changed_ into something evil?’

Hannibal allowed himself a small frown, and added a note of gentle rebuke to his next words. ‘Fear brushes the walls of your chest, circling inside you like a bat in a house. Get hold of it.’ Will looked up as though Hannibal’s words had slapped him. With his attention thus restored, Hannibal continued in his previously amicable neutral tone. ‘Wickedness, evil. Monsters and madness. In some ways you have a very medieval mind Will.’

Hannibal rose to get a glass and fill it with water for Will. Instead of approaching him with it, he put it back on Will’s side of the table. Will both resented and appreciated the gesture. Positioning himself as comfortably as possible back in his stiff backed chair, Hannibal resumed the conversation. ‘If I had any say in the matter, I would not want you to become anything as precisely and simply defined as evil. And I do think you are more than evil. There are parts of you that still clearly abhor injustice.’

‘Injustice.’ Will spat, resentment flying out with the word, his eyes heavy with judgement, accusations hanging in the air between them.

‘And, on that note, one of these days we’re going to have to address your feelings towards me.’

‘My _feelings_ towards you.’

‘Yes. Your other self, while mute on all topics, made it clear that some kind of confrontation is still required. Your present self is making it clear in other ways.’

‘Like my entirely justifiable anger?’ Will growled.

‘Yes.’ Hannibal said lightly.

Will’s jaw clenched hard enough to cause his wound to protest again; he ground his teeth into that pain, more loudly than he had thought possible. This brought some remote satisfaction when the shadow of a grimace crossed Hannibal’s face. Hannibal looked at him searchingly then pursed his lips.

‘It will be alright Will. We have caught this in its early stages. I can help you re-integrate yourself. But if you keep rejecting that part of you, you will lose all control in the matter. You have to absorb it, temper it with reason, with restraint, with compassion.’

‘Compassion?’ Will repeated, once again incredulous. ‘Coming from the man who would have me embrace murder?’

‘There is enough room, in your marvellous mind, to hold all things. To deny them gives them power. To accept them gives you back that power.’

Will sagged at the words, enough tension leaving his body that the remaining flight-or-fight chemicals left him feeling shaky. He was tempted back to his seat, where he drank the glass of water with some relief. When he reached the bottom of the glass he set it down with a curious amount of attention, putting it down so lightly on the wooden table that it didn’t make a sound.

‘So. How are we going to cure my… temporary… insanity?'

Hannibal’s smile was not one of his regular showroom smiles. This smile was bracing in its savagery. ‘I think a direct approach would work best.’

-

  
Will had finally relented and accepted the offer of food, and gone to investigate the rest of the cabin while Hannibal had cooked. When the dinner was nearly ready Hannibal had found him outside, where he was standing by the woodpile staring out into the trees.

‘I like the air up here.’ He had said, without turning to look at Hannibal.

‘These pines do have a particularly nice smell.’

‘Are they different to other spruce pines?’

‘Each forest has its own unique biome, each biome its own unique smell.’

Will smiled at that and inhaled deeply again. ‘I wish I could distinguish between them. All I know is, I love them all.’

_See,_ thought Hannibal, _that is why you are not a monster._ But he wouldn’t tarnish the moment for Will. He let him soak in the connective tissue of nature, healing in its own way, then drew him back into the house to eat.

Once food was presented Will realised he was ravenous, and Hannibal let him sate his appetite in silence. When the heat of his hunger had abated, and he was able to slow himself enough to savour the last remaining portion on his plate, he found his eyes drawn to the window, where the sky was beginning to darken.

Through the net curtains he saw the silhouette of a great antlered beast stalk past the house, darker than the inky blue beyond, and he shivered.

When Hannibal got up to serve them both a second helping, Will realised that – apart from the stiffness and pain evident from certain postures – Hannibal had been moving like a different person these last few days. Differently to the rigid formality of the psychiatrist, differently to the coiled instincts of the caged beast, more similarly perhaps to the man Will had seen briefly in Florence.

Perhaps he truly was behind the veil now. The question was, how many veils were there? Will tried to gauge Hannibal’s mental state, but even after all this time, the man had the ability to pull all the shutters down over his mind. He hadn’t gone to the trouble of creating a dramatic centrepiece for the table though, so perhaps he had relaxed his guard enough not to expect Will to contact the FBI.

There was a creak in the floorboards of his mind then, something that made him look behind him, even through a part of him already knew he hadn’t heard the sound with his ears.

When he looked back around, Hannibal was waiting to see if Will would tell him of his own volition what had caught his attention. Instead, Will lowered his eyes to his plate and concentrated on taking another mouthful. He took the bite with a great deal less appreciation than he had a moment before, chewing it with a hollow look around his eyes.

‘What do you think of the pearl-barley pumpkin?’ Hannibal asked, wanting to hear what emotions were skulking in Will’s response.

‘It’s great.’ He said, voice too terse, the smile too late on its heels. That smile was the first ‘lie face’ Hannibal had categorised when he was first learning to read Will. It seemed that this Will was regressing to earlier behavioural traits, likely indicating his other self was becoming correspondingly more distinct. 

As Will concentrated on keeping his face straight and ignoring Hannibal’s scrutiny, he began to notice the sound of his own heartbeat rising in his ears. _Woosh woosh woosh._ As though someone were walking down the corridors of his mind, walking closer with echoing footfalls. Echoing in his skull so that he felt the reverberation through his teeth.

He was tensing, he couldn’t stop himself. He could keep his breathing level, his face expressionless, but he couldn’t stop the approaching pounding in his ears, and his muscles betrayed him.

He shut his eyes, but it wasn’t just darkness waiting behind his lids. The branches of the trees were being whipped across the sky, the leaves stripped by the force of the wind, their skeletal arms scouring the air. The full moon, clouds racing under its beautiful baleful gaze, filled the scene with enough light to cast shadows. They danced and thrashed twisting patterns across every surface, across the antlered man who approached him; the only calm thing in the tempest.

When the moonlight flashed across the creature’s face, Will saw it was his own. Saw the light gleam off his teeth to show a smile like a scythe. Something in the forward momentum, the centre of gravity carried forward smoothly by predator’s muscles, jangled a warning through his veins. It was approaching with intent, without slowing, a glint of violent hunger in its eyes.

Will took a step back.  
It was the wrong thing to do.

Will raised his eyes slowly from the plate, shoulders lifting and back straightening with them. A double-edged smile played across his lips, and there was a direct frankness in his gaze that had become uncharacteristic of late.

‘Hello Dr Lecter.’

Hannibal inclined his head. ‘Hello again.’ Taking in that unfamiliar smile, slipping across that familiar face. ‘I am pleased you have found your voice.’

The face looked around. ‘Where are we now?’

‘You don’t share memories with Will?’

‘We were sharing memories before. Not any more.’

‘That’s a bad sign.’

‘For who?’

‘For both of you. Your condition is worsening.’

Will shifted his shoulders, rolled his neck. ‘It doesn’t feel bad. Actually, it feels good. I don’t even have to feel his pain.’ He stroked the bandage over his cheek.

‘And yet your body is injured, so please, leave the wound alone.’

Not-Will’s grin intensified. ‘You care about this body.’

‘And its occupants.’

‘Plural?’

‘Yes, even you.’

‘Especially me.’

Hannibal cocked his head at a slight angle. ‘You think you are favoured?’

Will lifted his chin, challenge and… something else… in his eyes. ‘You helped make me. You would not destroy me.’

‘Destroy? No.’

‘You could not.’ Will said simply, crisply, enjoying the words.

‘Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.’

Will’s gaze became taunting. ‘You can hope all you want, I have my own hopes.’

‘And what are they?’

Will shook his head. ‘I’m sure you already have plans. Plans that are manifold, agile, adaptive. New plans springing up all the time, testing themselves against the cold stone of your logic, winding around possible futures. I don’t think I’ll give you anything you can feed into your machinations.’

‘By choosing to speak you have already opened yourself up to me.’

‘We’re both reading each other… I wonder which of us has the more insightful text?’

They stared at each other for a charged second, and try as he might, Hannibal found he could not completely ignore the response that welled in him at the roaring of the stag. For a brief moment, Hannibal let his own monster properly look out through his eyes, and Will’s breath caught and quickened as like recognised like.

In a moment Will was on his feet, vaulting over the table with a kick, Hannibal standing to meet the attack, knocked backwards by the kick landing on his chest. His arm in its sling fired white pain up Hannibal’s arm and there was a wrenching stab from the healing rupture through his torso. Hannibal spun the valve of his pain shut, stumbling backwards, his chair trying to get caught in his legs but spinning off to the side with a glancing blow. Will was on the floor, having landed inexpertly after the sliding kick but recovering quickly, getting his legs under him and standing in a low crouch. He had picked up a fork on his foray across the table, one of the elegant silver long-tined forks Hannibal had been so pleased to find in the cabin’s drawers.

Hannibal flicked out his sleeve, as though trying to adjust his cuff, and Will growled low in his throat and lunged. Hannibal stepped back calmly, but not quite fast enough. The fork tines cut four fine red lines across the bridge of his nose and then Will had leapt at him, driving him to the floor.

Indifferent to the bullet wound and shattered arm, Will knelt with one knee on Hannibal’s chest and the other on the shoulder of his good arm, sharp-tined fork pressed up into the soft flesh of Hannibal’s jugular, his other hand gripped in Hannibal’s hair and pinning his head to the floor. He stared down at him with a wild grin and eyes lit with fires of retribution, and leaned in towards Hannibal’s impeccable poker face until he could feel his own hot breath reflected back from Hannibal’s skin. ‘I promised you a reckoning.’ His voice vibrating with menace like the rumble of a V8 engine.

Leaning in still closer, Will pressed his face into Hannibal’s cheek and roughly licked a line up Hannibal’s face, claiming ownership, tasting his skin, a droplet of blood that had rolled down the side of his nose. Hannibal, maintaining his inscrutability, spoke casually around the spars digging into his throat.

‘Is this really how you want to fight me Will? When I’m at half strength and easy prey?’

Will chuckled low in his throat. ‘You know, you manage pretty well with just one arm. And I know what a _clever_ monster you are. I’d be a fool not to take you now.’ 

‘Only when we embrace being the fool do we truly start to learn.’

‘Ah-ah-ah.’ The tines punctured skin. ‘Let’s not muddy the wa-’

Hannibal, finally able to re-unite his divided attention from his shirt sleeve, brought his arm up at the elbow and down in an arc, swinging the leather sap against the base of Will’s skull. Will’s eyes rolled up and he slumped, his teeth clacking together as his wolfish smile was snapped shut.  
  
-

Will stirred, consciousness scratching its way into his head. There was pain, and there was comforting warmth, the smell of brandy, and a violin concerto plucking at the air. He opened his eyes a fraction, then blinked around at the room. It was the sitting room. Hannibal had rearranged the furniture so that they were in chairs facing each other by the fire, as they had been in the study in Atlantic City. The main difference, as far as Will was concerned, was that this time he was tied to the chair with climbing rope. The pain that was blooming out from the back of his head was an ugly flower that had put down roots in his belly, and he wandered if he might have to be sick.

Hannibal was sitting with his legs crossed, body facing Will but inclined towards the fire, staring into the flames, a glass of brandy forgotten in his hand.

‘Really Hannibal?’ Will’s throat was dry. ‘You’re tying me up now?’

Hannibal brought his attention round to Will. ‘Would you prefer I drug you again?’

‘I- What happened to your face?’

‘You happened to my face.’

‘I… did that to you?’

‘Technically speaking, yes.’

‘Technically?’

‘You were not quite yourself.’

‘I’m sure you deserved it.’

‘Then you do have something in common with your alter ego.’

‘I’m… sorry - I don’t remember doing it.’ The inflection was vague.

‘That was ambiguously stated. Are you sorry because you did it, or sorry you can’t remember the experience.’

‘Yes.’ Will replied.

Hannibal smiled and drummed his fingers on his leg briefly. ‘Well no matter. The living body is one of the few teacups that can put itself back together, up to a point. My body will heal itself, and I have found a way to put you back together too. You will not have to be trussed indefinitely.’

Will swallowed. ‘How?’

‘Did you know Will, that you have quite a fan-base on the dark net?’

‘A what?’

‘There are forums there for people whose tastes runs to the… extreme. Mostly it’s fantasists and the morbidly curious, but there are some genuine articles in the crowd. Some of whom have congregated over their mutual fascination for you.’

Will shuddered at the thought. ‘Murder chat rooms… I can hardly credit you’d want to mingle, even digitally, with that sort of crowd.’

‘I rarely do. But it can be illuminating to know what crawls in the dark corners of the collective human subconscious. And it can be profitable.’

‘And how has it ‘profited’ you recently?’

‘It has informed me that there is a killer out there who has a kink for you.’

‘A kink?’

‘More or less.’

‘I seem to hold a particular interest for serial killers.’ Will sighed. ‘I wonder what that says about me.’

Hannibal smiled, but refrained from commenting.

‘And how am I his… no, I don’t want to know. In what way, then, is that profitable to you.’

‘It is profitable to all of us.’

‘All of us?’

‘I will have the satisfaction of giving you both what you want.’

‘And what is that?’ Will prompted dutifully.

‘An opportunity to meet the real Will Graham.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting close to the end of this one now! The rest of it is written, I'm just editing it and fine-tuning it. The next chapter is the conclusion so it's a bit longer than the others (about x1.5), then there's an epilogue. :D
> 
>   
> There are some quotes and paraphrasings from other sources, (aside from the show and Thomas Harris of course) including:  
> Chapter 2  
> \- Charles Baudelaire - Les Fleurs du Mal: Le Guignon, translated by George Dillon   
> Chapter 3  
> \- Rene Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy  
> Chapter 4  
> \- Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto III  
> \- Milton – Comus (A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634)  
> Chapter 5  
> \- Alfred Lord Tenysson – The Lady of Shalott (revised 1842 edition)  
> \- Henry David Thoreau – Walden  
> Chapter 6  
> \- Charles Baudelaire – Les Fleurs du Mal: La Muse Malade, translated by William Aggeler  
> \- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust, Part 1, Act 1, Outside the City Gate  
> Chapter 7  
> \- ‘Fear brushes the walls of your chest, circling inside you like a bat in a house. Get hold of it.’ is from the script for S03 E11 but was cut from the show.


	8. When a Game is not a Game

Day 13

‘It would be much easier if I could just handcuff you to a radiator while I go and collect our guest, with water and a book on hand. But I know you would just dislocate your thumb and wriggle out, so you’ll have to make do with the ropes and the radio.’

‘How long will you be gone?’

‘Just two or three hours.’ Hannibal said airily.

‘And what if you don’t come back?’

Seeing as how Will was bound and Hannibal was so close to the endgame now, he allowed himself a moment of indulgence, laying a hand on the other man’s head to fluff his hair and enjoy how it irked him. ‘I’m sure you would gnaw your way out, given enough time.’

When Hannibal had left, and the sound of the truck had Dopplered away through the trees, Will tried to get his teeth to bare on any of the ropes, but he could only just brush the one around his chest with his chin, and after some struggling – during which the knots just got tighter – Will forced himself to relax. Breathe. And relax.

He hadn’t been able to visit his stream since Hannibal had gutted him and cut Abigail’s throat. Hannibal had taken that from him too, leaning over him as he felt his life’s heat bleed out of him, telling him to _just wade into the quiet.._. Trying to visit the stream transported him back to that kitchen, again and again.

In recent years Will had tried other variations on waterways, but none of them held the tranquillity of the stream, and sooner or later all rivers led him to the same destination. Other retreats were denied him too; the sea crashed and boiled and occasionally reared up to smite him, prairies howled with desolation, forests were thrashed by the winds.

Eventually, as in all things it seemed, he had followed Hannibal’s lead and started to construct his own memory palace. The wing dedicated to Hannibal had been bricked up when he had starting dating Molly, but Jack Crawford and Francis Dolaryde had torn down the dividing wall, and the entrance was wide open.

Will turned away from it, trying instead to work on the blue-prints for a new extension to his mental structure. Throwing back dead ends so that they stretched into long corridors, unmarked doors sliding into place for rooms yet to be filled. Staircases spiralling up to new floors and levels, with windows that looked across courtyards to other parts of his keep. His activities paused abruptly by one of the new arched windows and he stared, astonished, at a new tower that had been raised on the far side of the palace, black and gothic.

He turned on his heel and ran the way had come, running back to the familiar corridors, turning towards the paths that should have led to that part of the structure. Steps faltering, expecting to emerge into the Hall of Dogs, but finding himself in the corridor of Louisiana, decorated like the hall of his house in New Orleans. This wasn’t right, the passages had shifted. He climbed stairs and looked out a set of windows to see the tower was still on the far side of his mind. That couldn’t be right.

He ran again, past the rooms that held the tenuous recollections of his mother, past the guilty and resentful spaces he had carved out for his father, down the stairs again to the sculleries where he kept the memories of recipes and restaurants and memorable meals - apart from Hannibal’s. Along and into the study hall and library where he had re-catalogued his university studies and teaching notes.

Ignoring the books and walking to the tall windows, he peered through the panes. They had metal casements that seemed to let in the chill of fear from the outer edges of his mind. The tower, the impossible tower, was still as far as it could be across the building from him. Something was moving his mind, moving _in_ his mind, making itself a space, and reordering the existing superstructure.

Will gripped the stone windowsill, hoping, fervently hoping, that Hannibal might actually be able to put him back together again.

-

Will awoke not at the sound of the car approaching, but of the engine cutting out once it was back. He didn’t feel any more rested and couldn’t tell how much time had passed. The bonds were painfully tight, as if he had been struggling against them in his sleep. The quality of light coming from the windows suggested it was, perhaps, early afternoon.

The front door unlocked and Will heard Hannibal come into the house, speaking in French and sounding – for Hannibal - animated.

‘Non, j’ai jamais!’ Said another voice, male, rumbling with over-eager amusement. _< No, I never have!>_

Hannibal led the stranger into the room, he was wiry and clean-shaven with long dark hair tied back. He wore a shop bought suit, but had invested in expensive shoes. His eyes latched onto Will as soon as he entered, and he stopped walking, nostrils flaring, drinking in the sight. ‘Ah, mais il he si beau.’ He sighed. < _Ah, but he is so beautiful. >_

‘Oui, je le crois aussi.’ Hannibal was looking at Will affectionately. < _Yes, I think so too. > _Will bared his teeth.

‘Mr Will Graham.’ Said the man, his English less heavily accented than Will had expected. ‘It is a very great pleasure to meet you.’

‘Can’t. Say. The same.’ Will ground out.

‘He has been uncooperative the entire time? How did you manage with your arm as it is?’ Some part of the new predator was still wary.

‘I’ve had him drugged with psilocybin and scopolamine, it made him very open to suggestion. It’s out of his system now of course, I thought you would want him in his right mind.’

‘Yes. I do. Very much.’ Eyes crawling all over Will, who could feel their contact like probing questing fingers. The man walked towards Will again, trying to look through his eyes into the mind behind them, but stopped and crouched a short distance from Will’s chair.

Will looked up at Hannibal instead, with every ounce of true loathing he had for the man. ‘What is this?’

‘I’m selling you Will. The federal government froze all my assets, and I have grown weary of you. This gentleman has promised to take very good care of you. At least in the short term.’ He turned to his companion. ‘Du vin?’ _< wine?>_

The man checked his watch, then gave a laugh as if the time was of no true consequence. ‘Un peu, s'il vous plaît.’ _< A bit, if you please.>_

‘Rouge ou blanc?’< _Red or white?_ >

‘Rouge, je pense.’ _< Red, I think.>_

‘Deux moments.’ < _Two moments_.>

Hannibal swept from the room and left Will alone with the stranger. Despite himself, Will’s eyes followed Hannibal out of the room with a plea in them.

His prospective buyer didn’t miss this, and chuckled, inching closer. ‘Hmm, better the devil you know, I think?’ Will turned towards him with a blank face and hostile eyes. ‘But we will come to know each other in time. Very well, I think. My name is Kane. I do what you do, study a person, watch them, get to know them. Crawl inside their lives, their minds. Then I take what I want from them, discard the rest. I already have seven other people in me. You will join me too, and with you in my head, I will be able to see into anyone.’

Will shook his head in distain at the fever in the man’s eyes. ‘Be careful what you wish for.’

‘You should not fear your gift. You won’t have to soon. I will carry it for you.’

He reached out and put his hands on Will’s knees. Will jerked and Kane laughed, but removed his hands as he saw something new move behind Will’s eyes.

Will looked down at his bonds and then at the unfamiliar face crouched before him. His pupils dilated as he recognised prey, but he schooled his face so as not to betray his nature. Kane remained crouched, looking at him with wary interest, on the cusp of asking him a question.

Hannibal re-entered the room with a tray that supported two glasses of red wine. Kane stood and reached for one of the wine glasses.

‘Would you mind taking the tray?’ Hannibal asked him instead, and the man changed the trajectory of his hand to oblige. From Will’s angle, he saw the syringe hidden in the hand that held the tray before Kane did. As Kane lifted the tray, Hannibal moved deftly to the side and jabbed the needle into his arm, then released it and took the tray back as the man’s grip on it loosened in surprise. Kane staggered away with a feral ‘Connard!’ and collapsed to the floor.

Hannibal looked very pleased with himself at having rescued the tray and its contents. He looked at Will. ‘Wine?’ Then he peered at him harder. ‘Ah, no. No wine for you.’

The creature wearing Will’s face smiled.

-

Hannibal had spent a lot of time in the woods as a child with his sister. At the end, the forests of his home became associated with his parents’ death, eking out a survival with Micha, and then the terrible winter in the hunting lodge.

Since those days Hannibal had spent little to no time standing amidst the trees purely for the sake of their company. Now, as twilight’s cloak brushed the forest floor, having collared and chained the two unconscious men to their trees, he had the opportunity to really breathe in the forest. The humus, the leaf detritus from the fallen deciduous leaves, the sap still flowing in the pines. Perhaps, if this night’s plans worked as intended, he would be able to enjoy the forests for their own sake again.

Kane stirred first, as expected, based on the timing of the doses. He lifted his head groggily, staring around him with confusion that quickly sharpened to anger as his fingers felt up and gripped the cold metal at his throat. He stood quickly, then had to rest against the tree while the blood caught up with his head.

Hannibal, standing as motionless as the trunks of the trees around him, did not immediately catch his notice. When Kane did spot him, he ran at him at full speed, pulled up short by the chain. They stood just out of arm-reach and Kane had to step back and cough over the compression to his throat by the strain of the collar. He reached up and tugged at the metal band, felt around it, fingers coming to a stop at the padlock at the back of his neck. Then his eyes widened and his hand travelled up to his hair. The ponytail was gone; his hair had been cropped and styled to resembled Will’s scruffy curls. Looking down, Kane saw he was no longer dressed in his suit, but was wearing the plaid woodsman clothes favoured by Will.

His eyes narrowed at Hannibal. He tried to speak but stopped almost immediately, only making a short bleating sound. His fingers went to his mouth and he seemed appropriately relieved when he found his tongue was definitely still in his mouth.

‘I’ve given you a sublingual venepuncture. It is not commonly performed on humans, but common enough in laboratory animals.’ Hannibal punctuated this with a blink. ‘I considered taking your tongue, but this should be a fair fight.’

Kane snarled at him.

Hannibal smiled pleasantly. ‘I’m afraid I exaggerated my financial situation, and am not best pleased at the concept of buying and selling men. That said, all is not lost, you can still leave here with what you came for. But if you want to take Will, you will have to claim him yourself.’ He looked over to where Will was collared to his own tree across the clearing. Kane followed his gaze and noticed him for the first time.

This seemed to surprise the man, who took a considering step backwards, some of the heat leaving his face.

‘You can keep your half a million, however you came by it. If you win, you can keep whatever’s left of him. If he wins… well. That’s up to him.’

Kane mused on this, walking away from Hannibal, testing the limits of his tether to see how close he could get to his opponent, his prize. Hannibal kept parallel with the man, always outside the area he had cordoned off in his mind. At the chain’s full length Kane was still a good six feet from Will, who had been propped against a different side of the tree facing away from Kane and the clearing. Loops of chain were loosely coiled on the ground, still waiting to be pulled taught.

Kane motioned and made another indecipherable moan, before grimacing, and taking a fresh moment to swallow his anger. Recovered, he gestured at the unconscious man and the distance between them.

Hannibal smiled benevolently. ‘Don’t worry. He’ll wake soon, and I don’t think he’ll need too much convincing to enter the ring. That said, I would prefer if you kept absolutely silent. I know the watching is part of your ritual, and even with all your skills, you’ll never engineer a better opportunity to see inside Will Graham’s head.’

-

It was full night by the time Will did surface. With the new moon in its darkest phase, Hannibal had wired up some spotlights to light the area. They cast severe shadows, and an assortment of moths and flying insects were diving and spiralling in at the hot bulbs, casting swooping shadows across the forest.

At first, the environment was so like his dreamscapes that Will doubted the authenticity of his experience. Then he felt the stiffness in his muscles from sitting slumped on the bare ground, the pain from the bark digging into his back, roots digging into his thigh, and a cold heavy weight around his collarbone.

Hannibal appeared in his field of vision. ‘Good evening Will.’

‘Dr Lecter.’ Will growled with a discourteous amount of courtesy.

Taking a moment to piece himself together and feel around the collar at his neck, he found the chain and discovered its anchor was the tree.

‘You will be happy to hear, I am not selling you.’ Hannibal reassured him.

‘And I suppose you’re going to tell me this is all part of my therapy.’ Will replied wearily.

‘Not just part of it. I believe, if you engage fully, this could be its conclusion.’

‘Engage in what?’ Will asked with manifest reluctance.

‘Before I explain, tell me, do you have any idea when this schism in you may have started?’

Will sighed exaggeratedly and rested his head back against the trunk of the tree, looking up to where the leaves shone in the unnatural light. It made him think again of his dreams, and then of the moving corridors of his memory palace. _Engage. If you’re going to get out of this, engage.  
_

‘I think it might have started in earnest when I was committed to the BSHCI. When I became aware of the game we were playing. I realised that, for you to believe me, I needed to believe what I was telling you… but I needed to keep a part separate too so I could retain my own agenda.’

‘And what was that agenda?’

‘To kill you. To destroy you.’

‘Why?’

Will paused. ‘You’re asking me why?’ He said slowly, with heavy emphasis.

‘In your own words, please.’

Will licked his lips and raked the soil with his fingers.

‘I told myself at the time, that it was for Abigail, and to get even. But it was more than that. A part of me, having finally realised we were sparring… wanted to win.’

‘The game?’

‘Your game.’

‘It was my game, so you couldn’t know the win condition.’

‘Ha. I’m still a little confused on that point.’

‘The goal was not to drive you mad, as you implied yesterday.’

‘Flat out stated.’ Will corrected.

‘The goal was, and always has been, to deliver you from the forts you have constructed in your own mind. To show you that they held you down, not safe. To help you see that the true prison that confined you, had never had a locked door.’

‘And if my… deliverance… cost you your life?’

Hannibal smiled. ‘It nearly did, a few times.’

‘And you still would have seen that as a win?’

Hannibal’s smile twitched in further amusement. ‘Not the outcome I would have most liked, but an acceptable one.’

‘This game.’ Will gestured between them. ‘This is the game that you would have spent your life for? Why?’

‘The fear of death follows from the fear of life. One who lives life fully is prepared to die at any time.’ Hannibal paused a moment, holding the silence in his particular way, before adding. ‘And sometimes, men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.’

‘So… it’s not just a game then?’

‘Quite assuredly not.’

Will stood up and approached Hannibal, stopping when the chain pulled at his collar.

Hannibal watched him, an almost bemused expression on his face. ‘I am just as much your prisoner as you are mine.’

Will fought the urge to point out the lack of physical evidence backing that statement up. ‘Why?’

‘You know why Will.’

‘You’ve hinted and insinuated and downright implied, but you’ve never said it… and that strikes me as unusually coy, for a creature such as yourself.’

‘I have already told you in all the ways you would consent to hear it.’

‘You’ve said we’re friends. You’ve said we’re family.’

‘Yes.’

‘But we’re not really either of those things. Friends don’t do what you… what we do, to each other. And unless I’ve got some Lithuanian blood in me…’ He shook his head. ‘It’s not an answer.’ Hannibal did not offer an alternative, so Will pressed on. ‘You said you had compassion for me.’

‘Have compassion.’ Hannibal corrected. ‘And you said I thought of you as a man thinks of a cow.’

‘I don’t doubt you feel something for me, but it’s twisted and scarred and… malformed.’

Hannibal drew in a tiny puff of air, not a gasp, just an early nip at a breath. ‘So many different types of cruelty.’ He whispered. ‘And only the physical ones are beneath you?’

‘I think.’ Will persisted, through gritted teeth. ‘The only reason you take such an interest in me is because you think you can remake me into yourself.’

‘If that were all I wanted Will, I would be content with a mirror. It would certainly be easier. I told you before that your nature is beyond me – you hold my interest, in a way no other has before you.’

‘I am a _pet_ to you. An entertainment.’

‘Would I consign myself for three years to the ministrations of Alana Bloom and Frederick Chilton, if you were but a pet to me Will? I know you are fond of your dogs, but certainly I would not do that for a dog.’

‘So say it then. Say it, and I’ll know… or might know… that you actually think you mean it.’

Hannibal looked at him consideringly. He took a step toward Will, who straightened up and tensed at his approach, but made himself stand firm. Stopping a pace away from him, Hannibal reached out and placed the palm of his hand on Will’s collarbone, eyes on his own hand as though curious to see what he would do. As if every action wasn't carefully dictated by the conductor of his mind's orchestra. After a moment of further consideration, he took a firm hold on the fabric around the lapel of his jacket, the material gathering correspondingly tighter around Will’s torso, as though he were in a parachute harness. Hannibal’s face was calm as he did it, and there was no aggression in the feel of it, but Will leaned back, not fully pulling away, but trying to maintain some control of the distance between them. Hannibal didn’t pull him towards him though, just raised his eyes to hold him in rapt and horrified attention.

Gently, firmly, in his lilting accent: ‘I love you Will.’

Will shook his head, refusing the words but knowing the truth of them. Hannibal released his hold on Will’s collar, slowly so that the man wouldn’t topple backwards, and moved his hand up to cup his face, stilling the motion of Will’s denial.

‘And you love me too.’

‘What I-’ he had to force the next words out of his mouth. ‘- _feel_ for you… is tied up in blood, and betrayal, and manipulation. That’s not love, it can’t be.’

Hannibal lowered his hand. ‘You are right. None of those things are love. They are separate events, not unrelated, but they are not love. But they do not preclude love. You have always struggled with yourself Will. You have not accepted yourself. You could not imagine that anyone would love you if they knew you for the monster you perceive yourself to be.’ Hannibal paused. ‘It is no surprise that you cannot accept that you love a monster too.’

‘I couldn’t.’ Will was shaking his head. ‘I don’t.’

Hannibal sighed, a note of impatience in the exhalation. ‘That does not concern me Will. I am bound to you one way or another, and I have no interest in forcing the issue. This is about resolving your separating identities. Do you wish for my help in the matter or not?’

Will stared wretchedly at his feet, the cold reminder of the collar against his chin. He could try to strangle Hannibal right now, if he could get a proper hold on his throat before he slipped away. There was no guarantee the doctor was keeping the key to the collar’s padlock on him though, and it would just about be his luck to starve to death next to Hannibal’s bloated rotting half-eaten corpse.

The thought caused a swell of something like hunger in Will, something that grew mobile, and moved in the undergrowth behind his eyes. This sensation, familiar enough now to be more terrifying than the starvation scenario, caused him to slide his eyes back up to Hannibal.

‘Yes.’

‘Yes what?’ Hannibal asked, tenderly.

‘Would you, please, help me.’

The needle slipped into his arm with a pinch. ‘Ah – goddamnit!’ Will yelled, stepping back, rubbing at the puncture. ‘Will you stop doing that!’

‘If all goes well, it may be the last time I have to.’

Will showed his teeth and continued to rub at his arm. ‘What was it?’

‘Just a little cocktail to help you with your therapy.’

Already, the lines that defined the forest around him seemed to be sharpening, the collar around his neck felt tighter, but the soreness in his limbs faded. He looked at his hand, and the dirt and leaf matter on them seemed to float on a separate layer above his skin.

Hannibal observed him and made a satisfied noise. ‘I think it’s time to make the formal introductions.’ Will swayed a little, reassessing his sense of balance, and turned his head to where Hannibal was looking.

At first he couldn’t see anything but a clearing in the forest with a stripe of bright light across it from one of the spot beams. Then a shape moved in the dark treeline beyond.

‘It is my very great pleasure to introduce you, to yourself.’

The shadows of moths spun across the clearing, and the figure stepped into the light. Even so Will had to squint as an argument broke out between his eyes and his brain.

Smiling, antlers growing up out of the man’s dark curls, Will saw himself, collared and chained, moving towards them with a killer’s grace.

‘It’s not possible…’ Will said, his mind reaching for an explanation he knew was there, if he could just recover enough of the pieces.

Hannibal shushed him gently. ‘Don’t get lost in the ‘how’s and ‘why’s Will. This is a unique opportunity. You will not have another chance to confront your alter-ego so directly.’

Will squared his shoulders because, as the other man approached, he could feel the footfalls in his mind too, feel that _other_ drawing near. He began to tremble, and Hannibal whispered. ‘Get a hold of your fear Will, see beyond it.’

The wendigo with Will’s face stopped at the end of his chain, and the _other_ pressed itself against the back of Will’s eyes, hot breath steaming up his mind.

‘Is it… is it real?’

‘It is very real Will. Given the chance it will take complete possession of you. Do. Not. Let. It.’

The wendigo tilted its head to one side, eyes blazing, and Will could feel his own head trying to mirror the movement. ‘So, little one.’ It said, its voice scratchy. ‘You are going to stop hiding?’

‘Wha- what do you want?’

The creature threw back its head and laughed at the sky.

It was easy enough for Hannibal to picture the two Wills across from each other, despite all the dialogue coming from one mouth. In the unreal light that cast its deep base relief of shadows, he could let himself see the conversation with his mind as much as his eyes.

‘You truly are redundant.’ The wendigo-Will finally returned. ‘Asking questions you know the answers to.’

‘How can I know your motives when you have gone to such _pains_ to hide them from me?’

‘You are as complicit in the deception as I.’ The othergrinned. ‘Building your forts to hide in while I prowled around their edges.’

‘You got into my forts.’ Will whispered.

‘And then you started building walls.’

‘And you moved them around.’

The wendigo took a step closer, but Will wasn’t sure which of them had really moved.

‘I can move them, because you gave up the autonomy, abdicated the responsibility. You know how good it feels, because I know how good it feels; but you wouldn’t admit it. You forced me out. But you and I, we’re same person, so I didn’t have anywhere to go.’

‘So you just... stuck around.’

Antlered Will smirked at old Will. ‘And you ran from the fight.’

Will bristled. ‘I’m not running now.’

But he did run, ran towards his antlered reflection, and they clashed with guttural roars.

Hannibal walked the periphery of the arena, watching as the two men matched strengths and twisted in an effort to throw each other. Despite the clothes and haircuts, it was not hard for him to differentiate between the grappling opponents as they toppled and rolled. He found himself quite unable to supress a small smile.

Kane had the advantage that he knew the real man he was fighting, but he was facing the wrath of both Wills, as they fought each other in the bone arena of his skull.

Will cried out as Kane dug a thumb into the healing wound on his shoulder, which had revealed itself by bleeding through Will’s shirt. The other Will took the driving seat for a moment, and as Kane tried to pull the same move on his injured cheek, Will’s jaws clamped down on the thumb. With a savage twist he bit through muscle and cartilage. He tried to tear the meat free, but the arm followed his movement as it felt his intention. Blood pooled into Will’s mouth.

Shouting out at the ghost pain, the hand tore itself from his mouth. Looking down, he was surprised to find his thumb was uninjured, and looking across, it was his other self with the bloodied hand. He looked down again at his own hand, bloodied but pain free, wiped at his mouth and tasted the blood there. Confused. He was seeing two men now. His antlered self rising to his feet as Will rose to his, and another man, Kane, scrambling backwards to assess the damage to his hand.

His antlered self turned from Kane and made eye contact, a current of communication flowing between them; for an instant, many windows of his mind aligned and he saw far across his own experience.

Kane staggered to his feet, thumb crushed but still attached, dripping blood that was shockingly red in the glare of the artificial lights. He put the hand behind him, and re-centred his stance with his other arm to the fore. 

Will, both Wills, took a step back, and another, merging together and giving ground and grinning through bloody teeth. Will’s whole body sang with the rightness of it all.  


Kane charged and Will lunged to the side and back again, looping the chain of his collar around Kane’s throat and hauling backwards with him, pulling him to the ground and rolling, to half rise and kneel on his back. Will’s face necessarily close to Kane’s ear, the chain that was sinking into the soft space between his collar and jaw only a few links removed from his own collar. Will gripped the metal links with white knuckles and bunched arms, crushing up on windpipe. A strangled cry from Kane.

And then… that moment of hesitation. The doubling effect again: part of him wanted to pull harder, lean backwards and break the body that writhed uselessly under him; part of him scrabbled for a reason not to. He began to divide his attention between the struggle beneath him and the struggle inside him.

A familiar presence slowly came to his side, and Will felt an upwelling of relief before consciously realising it was Hannibal. He turned his conflicted face to the man crouched beside him, muscles still taught around the strangling Kane but releasing a bit – just a bit – of pressure.

Hannibal put a hand out on Will’s shoulder. ‘You have a choice Will.’

‘I know.’

‘You can choose abstract virtue, spare this man, continue to repress your instincts. Or you can dispatch a man who would have paid to kill you, eliminate him with fully conscious consent.’

‘But…’ Will’s breathing was ragged, his lips curled back over his teeth, desperation driving him to honesty. ‘I want both.’

‘You want to be a good man, bound by moral integrity. You want to be a free man, to listen to his own nature. I told you to integrate compassion into your beast, now integrate logic.’

Hannibal removed his hand from Will’s shoulder but leaned in. ‘Is this man deserving of you compassion? Are your actions without justification?’

Kane made a choking noise. Will’s eyes narrowed and he gave him a warning shake through the chain.

‘There is also a third choice.’

‘What choice?’

Hannibal held up a small knife, let it catch the light for a moment, then put it on the ground next to Will.

‘You can kill both of us, and be free to leave with just yourself for company.’

Will’s face blanched. ‘What?’

Hannibal unbuttoned his coat, revealing a dark green sweater. ‘I would like to go forward from this point without further recriminations. I understand your anger towards me. I have been a force for change on your life, not all of it pleasant. But I will not have the weight of the past carried between us going forward.’  
Will searched his eyes, Kane eyeing the knife but keeping prudently still.

‘If I kill you now, chained like this, it might turn out you’ve kept the keys in the car.’

‘The only shackles you wear are mental ones Will. All the other doors have never really been locked. The key is in your pocket.’ And Will knew, without having to check, the truth of his words. Hannibal spoke softly. ‘Fuse your predator with your conscience. Decide now: kill recklessly; kill decisively; or stay in your cage.’

Will maintained eye contact, moving both lengths of chain into the one hand and reaching down with the other. Kane began to thrash on the ground as his eyes tracked Will’s hand picking up the knife, his cries distorted around his numb tongue and his buckling larynx. Will shushed him, gently now, lips against his ear, and brought the steel to the man’s throat.

Between the chain and the collar, there wasn’t much room to slip the blade – but there was enough. The point resisted against the flesh for a coy second, then broke the surface tension and slid into yielding skin with a smooth motion. Hot liquid guttered and spilled from the puncture, and Will pressed the blade between and through the bands of tracheal cartilage and jerked with a wrench of his arm.

A fine ribbon of red arced out across the dry leaves and needles of the forest floor as he opened Kane’s throat. Dark and bright and thick, it poured and pooled and pulsed, and there were brief bubbling and sucking noises as Kane tried to breathe through lungs filling with blood.

Will released the man in a rapid motion by pulling his chain back over Kane’s head, and letting him fall forward onto the ground. He sat up straighter, stretching and flexing all his muscles in turn.

Then he looked at Hannibal.

Hannibal’s face was composed but intent, his eyes shining with some unnamed emotion. Will reached out slowly with the knife, held it to Hannibal’s throat, and Hannibal leaned into it acquiescingly, chin high.

They remained motionless for a moment, some monsters’ conference happening behind closed doors, and Will withdrew the knife. Hannibal released his breath.

Will sat back on the ground, and dropped the knife. He looked around himself and at the forest, and laughed. The smile on his face was angelic, beatific, charmed, delighted, enthralled, fascinated, grateful, _happy_ ; Hannibal continued to roll through the alphabet in his own enchanted mind, positively giddy.

‘How do you feel?’ He asked Will through a wide and genuine smile.

Will brought his eyes back to meet Hannibal’s; the light and relief and joy in his face didn’t dim an iota. ‘Whole.’ He said, and beamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Et bon, that is the finale! Next is the epilogue, where we see some old friends, and get a glimpse of our favourite murder husbands in their new life.
> 
> There are some quotes and paraphrasings from other sources, (aside from the show and Thomas Harris of course) including:  
> In Chapter 3  
> 1\. Rene Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy  
> In Chapter 4  
> 2\. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto III  
> 3\. Milton – Comus  
> Chapter 5  
> 4\. Alfred Lord Tenysson – The Lady of Shalott (revised 1842 edition)  
> 5\. Henry David Thoreau – Walden  
> Chapter 6  
> 6\. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust, Part 1, Act 1, Outside the City Gate  
> Chapter 7  
> 7\. ‘Fear brushes the walls of your chest, circling inside you like a bat in a house. Get hold of it.’ is from the script for S03 E11 but was cut from the show.  
> Chapter 8  
> 8\. Albert Camus – The Fall  
> 9\. Edward Abbey – A Voice Crying in the Wilderness


	9. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Quebec City

Jack emerged from the arrivals in Quebec City airport towing Zeller and Price a few paces behind, wheeling their metal cases of equipment and kits. They were met by the representatives of the Sûreté du Québec, the Service de police de la Ville de Québec, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Zeller was a little disappointed that there weren’t any Mounties in the greeting committee, and he confessed as much to Price in a muted aside as Jack did the dutiful handshakes.

‘The Mounted police don’t have full jurisdiction in Quebec or Ontario.’ Price confided back in a poor stage whisper. ‘The Sûreté du Québec do all the provincial policing here.’

‘Oh.’ Zeller mouthed back, with an expression that implied the answer was in no way interesting.

They were enveloped into a convey of cars and soon found themselves riding up a four lane highway out into the hills. 

‘I’m impressed with how quickly you cut through the red tape.’ Jack was saying to the deputy-director of the Sûreté, Virgil Cartier. ‘I’ve never seen international cooperation swept through like this.’

‘I just pointed out to the Director General that Lecter – if it is Lecter – has made a fool of every agency that’s ever chased him. Or held him.’ He said bluntly. ‘My superior would rather you cleaned up your own mess.’

‘Sounds like Director General Prud'Homme is a smart men.’ Jack replied honestly, too tired and humbled by the last few weeks for any anger. Virgil looked at him with a little more sympathy.

When Jack first walked through the trees, he thought for one heart-stopping moment that it was Will Graham’s body swinging by the ankle. Despite being told that the victim had been identified as Julien Kane, the clothes and hair, and the swollen upside-down face, made it hard to dislodge the idea once it was in his mind. 

The police were keeping the area well locked down, more to ensure no journalists or hill-walkers found the site than because anyone thought the killer(s) might still be around. Their murmured conversations dried up as Jack’s presence filled the clearing, the man taking in the scene and taking charge without saying a word. The man was suspended with his fingers just off the ground, his free leg bent at the knee behind the other, coins scattered on the floor beneath him.

A woman who could have bench-pressed Zeller approached Jack and held out her hand. ‘Agent Crawford? Inspector Barbeau.’

‘Pleasure to meet you. Circumstances aside.’ He was still squinting at the body, trying to reassure himself it wasn’t Will he was seeing.

‘Body bled out over there.’ She pointed to where a white tent had been erected. ‘Hoisted and posed post-mortem.’

‘You haven’t cut him down yet.’

‘Wanted to. Cartier told us to wait ‘til your men process him. You know what you’re looking for.’ 

Jack glanced back at Zeller and Price, who gave him the empty smiles of the not particularly hopeful.

‘You got anything yet?’

Barbeau walked him through the scene as she saw it, and none of it made a damn lick of sense to Jack, but he nodded at her in thanks when she was done. She took the cue and left him to it.

‘You know, I think I saw something like this in a Polanski film.’ Price was saying to Zeller. ‘A dead guy, hanging upside down by his foot, the other one folded behind at the knee, just like that.’

‘What was the symbolism of it?’ Jack asked.

‘Something to do with a book that would let you summon the devil.’

‘Devil worship? That’s a little on the nose for Hannibal.’

‘It was part of some iconography. Hold on, I’ll see if I can look it up.’ Price drew out a tablet with satellite uplink and began to search the internet.

Zeller was delicately peering through the corpse’s clothes, trying not to start the body swinging. He made an exasperated sound and waved over a uniformed officer. ‘Can you, just, hold him steady? Thanks. Yeah, uh-huh. Jack! The thymus is missing.’ He undid the man’s shirt. ‘Pancreas too, from the looks of it.’

‘The sweetbreads.’ Price said, with a shiver.

Zeller held Jack’s eyes. ‘I’d have to take a proper look on the table, but it looks like the Ripper’s work. Not this slash here though.’ He gestured at the throat wound. ‘Got through the cartilage but there’s more force than precision.’ 

‘Here we go!’ Said Price, holding up his hand with misplaced enthusiasm and then reading out: ‘The hanged man… chooses to be hanged… surrenders all that he wants, knows or cares about. Coins fall from his pockets – hey that fits! - and as he watches them fall he sees them not as money but only as round bits of metal.  
‘His perspective of the world changes, his inverted position suspends him between the mundane world and the higher world, able to see both. This new way of seeing things leads him to insights and enlightenment. All of which the Hanged Man hoped to buy with his sacrifice.’ Price looked up. ‘Ok, now I’m confused. Maybe that’s not right.’

‘This is from some devil book?’ Jack asked.

‘No.’ Price admitted. ‘The hanged man is one of the Arcana cards.’

‘The what?’

Zeller snorted. ‘Tarot cards?’

Jack looked at him with raised eyebrows.

‘What? I’ve had girlfriends. Suzie was…’ he trailed off.

‘Uh-huh.’ Said Price with a humouring smile and a patronising nod before turning back to Jack. ‘But tarot cards weren’t always used by mediums and fortune-tellers. The first documented tarot packs were used by the Florentine nobility in the 1400s.’

‘Now _that_ sounds like Lecter.’ Zeller agreed.

Jack sighed, a sigh that Price and Zeller recognised well enough to button their lips while Jack mulled it all in his head.

‘So, this man is dressed up like Will Graham. You’re saying Lecter took the… sweetbreads, and approved the symbology. But the throat was cut by someone else, and all of this is meant to represent some new insight, some new… beginning?’

Zeller and Price looked at each other. At this point in a normal day they would probably nod at each other and shrug a simultaneous yes back at Jack. This time however, his tone, and the implications inherent in his words, helped them hold their tongues.

Jack nodded anyway. ‘Will’s new beginning.’

Indonesia

Large white-crested waves rose and fell with the motion of the Pacific. Will was sitting upright on one of the deck chairs on the beach, in the shade of a thatched parasol, trying to remember if he had ever felt heat like this before. There was a different quality to it than from his summers at the lakes or the gulf.

In the distance was another island, most of it in the eclipse of a large cloud sitting out to sea. Turning his head, he could see the walls and foliage of the safe-house; the open-walled villa apparently trying to occupy the same piece of space-time as its garden. Behind that, hills rose up into the haze of the humid air.

Hannibal appeared through the gate with a tray of drinks, in dark red shorts and an open shirt. He padded across the sand and placed the drinks tray on the table, adjusting the back of the empty deck chair to a vertical position before relaxing. 

Will looked at the garishly orange drinks in their condensation beaded wine glasses, citrus slices bobbing against the ice cubes. At the raised eyebrow of his question, Hannibal smiled. ‘A Spritz Veneziano: two parts Prosecco, to one and a quarter Aperol, and a splash of soda water. A popular aperitif in northern Italy, although I rarely drank it there. Here, however, it seems appropriately cheerful.’

‘It certainly is… bright.’ Will said with a smile and a dubious expression.

Hannibal picked up a glass and looked at the sea through the orange liquid. ‘ _Let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow_.’

Will smiled and tried the aperitif. It was more bitter than he had expected, there was the tang of rhubarb - from the Aperol he supposed - and Hannibal had clearly used a good Prosecco. Will gave a hum of approval.

Hannibal smiled and took a sip of his own. Will took a mental picture, complete with the taste of the spritz and the sun on his skin, and added it to his memory palace.

The wing that had been Hannibal’s had merged into the other parts of the palace now, spilling its contents through his halls to be resorted into more appropriate rooms. He had been able to explore the dark tower too, its foundations now fixed and its chambers linked to other parts of the castle with suspended passageways. The contents of the tower had been less horrifying than he had expected, its secrets stirring excitement rather than aversion, and while the chains in the garrets occasionally rattled for new occupants, Will could reassure those urges that their time would come.

He had found other urges in him too, and though they caused ripples of fear in his gut, he had learned that leaving them unacknowledged would be detrimental. These urges took the form of questing vines reaching in through the doorways of his memory palace. Blindly at first, he felt along for where they stemmed from, traced them back into neglected gardens, gardens of chaotic growth and tangled thorny branches. Will had taken some time to inspect these previously unexplored grounds; pruning back some of the vying creepers, tending some of the struggling shoots, clearing away the detritus of dead thoughts. The more time he spent in the garden, the calmer he felt there, and it was in an alcove of this garden that he placed the bright memory of Hannibal drinking an Italian cocktail on the tropical sand, with the beach and sea stretching into the haze beyond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have some ideas for a Part 2, that would force Hannibal to confront some of his own buried trauma, but I'm currently working on a big project (non-AO3 related), so if you want more please let me know, it will motivate me! :)
> 
> The quote about bathing your soul in colours is an extract from one of Kahil Gibran's letters, dated 8th November 1908

**Author's Note:**

> I write loads, but this is my first time posting any creative writing online! I hope someone out there likes it! ^_^
> 
> I'm pretty damn late to the Fannibal party, but happy to have arrived! Also, I just love that so many of us have our own little 'Will Graham's and 'Hannibal Lecter's kicking around in our brains!


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